OPM Cyber Breach

  • Following the hack of Office of Personnel Management databases, a group of tech-industry experts is offering to help the government secure its computer networks. The IT Alliance for Public Sector assembled a task force made up of 20 big companies like Symantec, Microsoft and Lockheed Martin. The group says the government must act boldly and alter its culture and approach. Pam Walker is the senior director of Homeland Security at I-TAPS. She joined Emily Kopp on the Federal Drive to review the group's recommendations.

    August 06, 2015
  • Despite overwhelming agreement that cybersecurity legislation is needed, Senate lawmakers couldn’t agree on how such a bill would look. Lawmakers did approve the nomination of Denise Turner Roth to be GSA administrator.

    August 06, 2015
  • The back-and-forth is on hold now in the Senate over the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act. The bill encourages private companies and government agencies to share information with each other about potential cyber threats. Both amendments to the CISA are holding it back.One would give the Office of Personnel Management an extra 37 million dollars to fix its IT networks a year ahead of schedule. The other would give victims of OPM's data breaches a few more years of free credit monitoring. Ryan Lucas is an intelligence reporter for CQ Roll Call. He tells In Depth with Francis Rose what's in the bill and whether the disagreements can be resolved.

    August 05, 2015
  • The massive data breach impacting more than 22 million current and former federal employees leaves many with more questions than answers. A recent Congressional Research Service report highlighted several of those unknowns that continue to plague this evolving situation. Dan Blair is president of the National Academy of Public Administration and a former deputy director at OPM. He joined Jason Miller on the Federal Drive to try to answer some of those concerns.

    August 05, 2015
  • The Office of Management and Budget just posted the latest data from its 30-day cyber sprint. Alan Paller of the SANS Institute and a task force of industry experts offer their insight on what are the next steps agencies should be taking to improve their cybersecurity.

    August 04, 2015
  • For agency managers responsible for cybersecurity, the last few weeks have been challenging. The data breach affecting millions might have been the direct responsibility of the Office of Personnel Management, but the response has been all-of-government - starting with the now-concluded 30-day cyber sprint. Cyber is a matter of technology, skill and people. Alan Paller, the director of research at the SANS Institute, joined Jared Serbu on the Federal Drive to offer some perspective on what CIOs and cybersecurity officers need to do next.

    August 03, 2015
  • The Office of Management and Budget revealed that during the 30-day cyber sprint, agencies improved their use of strong authentication for privileged and unprivileged users by 30 percent.

    July 31, 2015
  • Updated: Retired Rear Adm. Earl L. Gay, President Barack Obama's nominee for deputy OPM director, has withdrawn his name for the position, according to OPM. Since 2013, Gay served as the senior adviser to former director Katherine Archuleta.

    July 31, 2015
  • We may know the who, what, when and where of the OPM cyber hacks, says Senior Correspondent Mike Causey, but the "why" still remains something of a mystery.

    July 31, 2015
  • The Office of Personnel Management's data breach has people questioning the competence of OPM’s staff and leaders, and asking why OPM exists in the first place, says former DHS HR executive Jeff Neal. So what does something other than business-as-usual look like?

    July 30, 2015
  • The problem with most data breaches is that too often, IT and security staffs only find out about them long after the damage has been done and the hackers have moved on to other soft targets, says Federal Drive host Tom Temin.

    July 30, 2015
  • The Navy's Naval Sea Systems Command will be in charge of hiring a contractor to provide identity-protection services to victims of the breach on the Office of Personnel Management's background-investigation database. NAVSEA will issue an RFQ early next week. GSA was supposed to send it out this week.

    July 28, 2015
  • The Office of Personnel Management is in post-mortem stage on Capitol Hill. Members and their staffers are either knowledgable about technology issues or learning. Parham Eftekhari is co-founder and senior fellow of the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology. Mark Seward is a fellow at ICIT. They tell In Depth with Francis Rose about their group's analysis of the OPM cyber breach that they sent to to members of Congress and their staffs.

    July 28, 2015
  • Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations, told In Depth with Francis Rose that he's pleasantly surprised by acting OPM Director Beth Cobert's outreach efforts.

    July 28, 2015