Just how safe is your Personal Information at Federal Agencies?

Security Breaches of Personal Information have More than Doubles Since 2009:

Millions of individuals who recently entrusted personal, medical, and financial information to the federal government while enrolling in Obamacare via Healthcare.gov may find a recent trend reported by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) rather unsettling. The number of security breaches involving Personally Identifiable Information (PII) at federal agencies more than doubled in recent years, increasing from 10,481 in 2009 to 25,566 in 2013. Perhaps even more disturbing, the GOA found that "none of the seven agencies [in a related study] consistently documented lessons learned from PII breaches." 

A graph accompanying the GAO report illustrates the dramatic and consistent upward trend in PII-related breaches over the last several years:

A data breach may consist of something as simple as mailing documents containing PII to the wrong recipient, but also includes incidents involving massive loss of sensitive data as illustrated by these examples in the report: 

- [I]n May 2006, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) reported that computer equipment containing PII on about 26.5 million veterans and active duty members of the military was stolen from the home of a VA employee. 

- In July 2013, hackers stole a variety of PII on more than 104,000 individuals from a Department of Energy system. Types of data stolen included Social Security numbers, birth dates and locations, bank account numbers and security questions and answers... 

- In May 2012, the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB) reported a sophisticated cyber attack on the computer of a contractor that provided services to the Thrift Savings Plan. As a result of the attack, PII associated with approximately 123,000 plan participants was accessed. According to FRTIB, the information included 43,587 individuals' names, addresses, and Social Security numbers, and 79,614 individuals' Social Security numbers and other PII-related information.

Read the rest of the article HERE.

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