WSJ and "Cyber meltdown"

I have to agree that the OPM fiasco was a mess, and the term "meltdown" applies.  The Wall Street Journal op-ed today says a little bit about how significant the data was that was taken from the OPM site.  What is interesting to me is the speculation on Congressional staff and those investigated for clearances who may not have received one, or never needed one after they were investigated.  That was the first time I had heard that that kind of data.  As you remember, the first estimate by the OPM was 4M records; now, we hear 18 million.  As I said before, those numbers seemed low, given the number of cleared people in government, retired persons, and contractors.  If it hasn't occurred to you yet, they may not know how many records they lost.  That could be worse than the numbers.

The decision to accept the risk for that data being secured in the way it was ultimately fell to the Director of the Agency.  Stonewalling, a typical political activity in Washington is not helpful.  Hiding behind the "national security implications" statement by the OPM IG is stupid.  That data is gone.  All the speculation about what is being done with this data is just that - speculation. We have elections coming up, and that information can be used in a lot of ways that politicians will be fretting over for the next few years.  Good.  Maybe they will take some action to get systems some security that hold government information. As one of those with records in that system, I want better security in IRS, Social Security, OPM, the Postal Service, and all the rest of the Federal activities that were hacked.

Given the type and frequency of these kinds of hacks on our government, it appears they don't get the message about security of our data.  They take risks with it every day, lose it, and do nothing to correct the situation.  They paper it over, stonewall, hide the e-mails, obscure the story, and put fingers to their lips to warn employees to keep quiet.  This is the way the Chinese do business.  We should expect better from our own government.