Scourge · June 4 2015

The Scourge of the Federal Files

Chronicle

On 4 June 2015 the Office of Personnel Management, which runs the US government's civilian workforce, announced an intrusion discovered in April that had exposed records of about 4.2 million federal employees. A related intrusion into background-investigation files soon came to light: it affected 21.5 million people, including 5.6 million sets of fingerprints. These were the dossiers used to grant security clearances, full of details about applicants' private lives.

Lesson learned

It taught that some data cannot be "changed" like a password, and pushed the federal government towards encryption, MFA and long-postponed modernisation.

Prayer of reparation

O bottomless archive, keeper of fingerprints that can never be revoked, inspire those who store data forever to protect it as though it were forever. Amen.

How it is remembered

Remembered by encrypting sensitive data at rest, requiring MFA for administrators and keeping only what is truly needed.