A cybersecurity problem with the Electronic Questionnaires for Investigations Processing (e-QIP) system forces the Office of Personnel Management to shut it down for four-to-six weeks, potentially impacting thousands of current and prospective federal workers and contractors trying to get security clearances.
Four major overhauls can turn massive data breaches from disasters to catalysts for change. Attracting talented cyber professionals and streamlining the IT cyber acquisition process are some of the key ingredients Richard Spires recommended to the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government. He is the former chief information officer at the Department of Homeland Security and the Internal Revenue Service, and now CEO of Resilient Network Systems. He tells In Depth with Francis Rose that he sees systemic weaknesses in government IT security that need to be fixed now.
Similar to the Office of Personnel Management, agencies are struggling to move off of previous generations of technology. Federal Chief Information Officer Tony Scott said the government is at a “critical inflection point” and needs to change its approach to buying and securing IT.
The Office of Personnel Management has extended credit monitoring services to just a fraction of the victims of the recent breaches on its personnel databases. Many more — including federal employees' family members and contractors — are wondering if and when they'll be offered the same treatment.
Seventeen Republican House members joined Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Friday in calling for the removal Office of Personnel Management Director Katherine Archuleta and OPM CIO Donna Seymour.
The Director of National Intelligence is the first administration official to publicly attribute the OPM breach to China, and says intelligence agencies would have engaged in similar operations if given the opportunity.
Tony Scott, the federal chief information officer, said he fully supports OPM Director Katherine Archuleta and CIO Donna Seymour in their efforts to address long-standing cyber challenges, and cautions lawmakers to ‘be careful about distinguishing fire starters from firefighters.’
DHS says its program to scan federal networks for cyber threats should be mostly finished by the end of this fiscal year, but it still faces obstacles in implementation of EINSTEIN 3, which seeks to stop cyber attacks before they enter federal networks.
During the second hearing of the week, the Office of Personnel Management defended its hiring of Winvale and CSID despite continued questions about the $21 million contract. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) pressed OPM about the possibility of the second breach impacting 32 million current and former federal employees.