Washington — It’s been more than two months since the Office of Personnel Management was hacked, compromising the data of millions of federal workers. Last month, both the Senate and the House held hearings on the matter with plenty of fingers pointed and blame placed but with few answers. On Wednesday lawmakers will launch a new round of hearings looking into the data breach. Science and Technology House Subcommittee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) said the OPM hack says this may be just the tip of the iceberg.
“We do know these data breaches are the worst we know of to date. It might have involved as many as 18 million federal employees as well as their information that might be privileged or classified or deal with our national security,” Rep. Smith said. He blamed OPM as well as the Obama administration for withholding crucial information.
“They’re not telling us how many people had their data breached, they’re not telling us who’s going to be held accountable,” he said.
Finding someone to blame, will likely be just a first step.
The more difficult part, according to cybersecurity experts will be preventing a similar attack from happening again, especially with the tug-of war between technology and innovation and always trying to stay one step ahead of the hackers.
For Chmn. Smith, the hack at OPM should not merely be once again debated and then forgotten.
“We need to find out what went wrong, who was responsible, and how we can prevent this kind of identity theft and theft of security information in the future,” he said.
The Office of Personnel Management is planning to inform those potentially affected by the breach beginning this week.
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