OPM Breach Exposes Agency’s Systemic Security Woes

By Ericka Chickowski

The immediate thoughts from the security community when news broke of the data breach at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that exposed personnel files of four million federal workers were that this was yet another sign of the room for improvement in the federal government on the cybersecurity front. But as details continue to emerge about the true state of security at the agency prior to the breach and the plans officials have laid out to prevent such attacks in the future, the problem seems to be much bigger than originally thought. Room for improvement implies at least a baseline level of understanding of security principles — a state which many security pundits following the story question really exists in the first place. (Read more)