After Another Security Breach, U.S. Personnel Director Resigns

Katherine Archuleta, director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), resigned after announcing that hackers stole personal information for more than 22 million people. Hackers accessed social security numbers, fingerprints, contact information, and usernames and passwords of federal employees, contractors and their spouses. Archuleta had failed to install appropriate safeguards for the government’s records and did not quickly detect or address one of the largest breaches in history.

President Obama appointed Archuleta in 2013 and accepted her resignation, with his administration promising to increase its cyber security efforts. The acting OPM director is Beth Cobert, the current U.S. chief performance officer and deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget. The Obama administration has been defending Archuleta, crediting her office with identifying the breach during a project to upgrade security on government networks.

According to the Direct of National Intelligence, James Clapper, one of the top suspects in the breach is the Chinese government. In two separate hacks, the perpetrators were able to gain access to government records for almost a year beginning last May. The majority of the records pertain to people who had applied for background checks. OPM said that it would provide free credit monitoring to those people whose data was stolen. 

To read more from Caroline click here

To read more from Bloomberg.com click here

Caroline Smith is currently a senior at the University of Notre Dame and is a contributor to Medical Groups. She is majoring in Science-Business and Spanish. After graduation, Caroline plans on entering the field of healthcare consulting. She is most interested in the evolving policy changes in the healthcare industry and enjoys learning about new technologies that are being developed.