The U.S agency of personal management suspended one of its IT program as two major programs got hacked earlier this year. The program was used to complete background investigations, a significant amount of information about Americans got leaked in this hacking activity.
The program is known as Electronic Questionnaire for Investigations Processing (e-QIP) was not a part of this hacking activity and is saved from pervious intrusion attempts by Chinese hackers as suspected on personal data and applications for security clearances. The security breaches happened in starting of June.
Till date there is no evidence of this information being exploited or used anywhere.
With this security breaches the use of electronic submission will get reduced as there are more chances of getting hacked in electronic system comparative to manual submission using paper and submitting data on paper.
Many officials feel the old school method of data entering and form submission is much safer then electronic.
The breach has initiated the need for change as electronic systems are considered to be more prone to cyber hacks and intelligence agencies and others are switching back to their previous ways of data submission.
Director of OPM, Katherine Archuleta has asked for a security review and the results found vulnerabilities in system resulting in taking down of QIP for few weeks till the time the program is more secure and changes are done. With the number of breaches taking place in OPM, lawmakers are keeping a doubt on Archuleta’s ability to head OPM.
The electronic system is designed for collecting huge volume of personal data consisting of information about finances to relatives as a part of background check for federal. A special security number is sued for sign in by employees. This security breach can cause severe damage to companies looking for security clearness as revealed by Brain Kaveney.
Federal agencies have worked their sweat out to reduce backlog caused by 2013’s budget and similar issues faced by people. Now this recent security measure will increase the clearance time and will add on to the backlog which will reduce the pace of businesses. This data breach has affected around 10 million users and the Federal Bureau of Investigation has increased them up to 18 million.