Cybersecurity

  • Hackers attempted to steal federal employees\' personal information nine times within the past year. The Office of Personnel Management said it found out about the most recent cyber attack back in April. OPM is starting to tell employees if they\'ve been affected and what they can do to protect their information. Dan Blair, president of the National Academy of Public Administration and former deputy director at OPM, tells In Depth with Francis Rose why hackers are after more than just your identity.

    June 09, 2015
  • The vast majority of respondents to our Federal News Radio poll - 82 percent - said they were \"very worried\" about the breach and that if they were affected, they planned to take advantage of the credit monitoring services being offered by OPM.

    June 09, 2015
  • Last week\'s disclosure of a massive data breach at the Office of Personnel Management has officials in Washington reeling. We know the outlines of the episode: Up to 4 million federal employees, current and retired, could be affected. The theft occurred in December but wasn\'t reported until last week. Cybersecurity expert Rodney Joffe, a senior vice president and fellow at Neustar, joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive to offer a long-term perspective. He says the nature of the data taken means some people will have to worry for the rest of their lives.

    June 09, 2015
  • A new memo from federal chief information officer Tony Scott gives agencies 19 months to move all Internet-facing sites and Web services to the HTTPS standard.

    June 09, 2015
  • All in all, data on about 4 million workers, former workers and retirees, was scooped up by hackers believed to be working for the Chinese government or military, says Senior Correspondent Mike Causey.

    June 09, 2015
  • Free online chat with David Cotton, Defense Deputy CIO for Information Enterprise.

    June 08, 2015
  • President Barack Obama said \"significant vulnerabilities\" exist and will continue to accelerate in government and private sector systems, unless changes are made.

    June 08, 2015
  • Hackers steal personally identifiable information for more than 100,000 taxpayers through the Internal Revenue Service\'s GetTranscript portal. Dean Silverman, former director of the Office of Compliance Analytics and senior adviser to the commissioner at the IRS, is now a senior adviser for Intuit. He tells In Depth with Francis Rose, the IRS can learn a few things from industry about its next steps to combat identity fraud.

    June 08, 2015
  • The breach of the Office of Personnel Management\'s network focuses attention on hiring cyber professionals. A hand-picked group of agencies can soon take advantage of a short-term hiring authority to find new cybersecurity and digital services professionals. OPM says appointments must be for one of the Smarter IT Delivery Initiative programs. Jeff Neal, senior vice president at ICF International, is a former chief human capital officer at the Homeland Security Department. He tells In Depth with Francis Rose why agencies are force-fitting new jobs into a General Schedule system that is too old to handle a mobile talent pool of cyber professionals.

    June 08, 2015
  • The Office of Personnel Management starts notifying employees today that their personal information may have been compromised. As many as 4 million current and former federal employees may be affected. Now the question is, has the government learned anything from this incident, or is it lurching from crisis to crisis? SANS Institute\'s Director of Research Alan Paller joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive for a look ahead.

    June 08, 2015
  • In Senate hearings regarding the recent breach of the Get Transcript system last week, IRS officials said they were \"reviewing options\" to make their online services more secure. They did not mention the agency already has asked vendors for bids on a wide array of new authentication services.

    June 08, 2015
  • The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team released in May an analysis report detailing nine incidents between July 2014 and May 2015 where hackers stole what they call \"bulk personally identifiable information (PII)\" from public and private sector organizations. Secretary Jeh Johnson issued the first-ever Binding Operational Directive to agencies in May, mandating they fix all ‘critical vulnerabilities\' in 30 days.

    June 08, 2015
  • If you are a current or former fed, personal information about you like your name, birth date, Social Security number and, maybe, where you went to school could now be in the hands of hackers after a breach last week at the Office of Personnel Management.

    June 08, 2015
  • The cyber attack against the Office of Personnel Management is part of a year long coordinated effort to steal federal employee and contractors\' personal data. The Homeland Security Department issued an alert in May detailing a series of attacks against government and industry. Federal News Radio\'s Executive Editor Jason Miller explains why federal employees need to be more aware of targeted spear phishing attacks than ever before.

    June 05, 2015

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