Global Security, Privacy, & Risk Management

Dear OPM – Thanks for exposing my data!…”Clean up your own backyard!” (Elvis) October 20, 2015

Let me start with Elvis’ “Clean up your own Backyard”

“Back porch preacher preaching at me
Acting like he wrote the golden rules
Shaking his fist and speeching at me
Shouting from his soap box like a fool
Come Sunday morning he’s lying in bed
With his eye all red, with the wine in his head
Wishing he was dead when he oughta be
Heading for Sunday school

Clean up your own backyard
Oh don’t you hand me none of your lines
Clean up your own backyard
You tend to your business, I’ll tend to mine”

Today I received a letter from the United States Office of Personnel Management or OPM informing me that my personal data had been stolen in a data breach.  As a quick reminder the OPM was the victim of a major data breach in which over 22.4 million current and former federal workers and military members’ personal information was stolen by the Chinese Government although the Obama administration did not formally accuse Beijing.

The breach was finally disclosed by the OPM in June 2015 but started in March 2014. So what was stolen?  According to the report I received today…it included (ready for this)…1) Social Security Number 2) Full Name 3) Address 4) Education History 5) Employment History 6) Information on my dependents and close family and 7) my SF86 from when I applied for my security clearance…among other data. For those who are unaware..the SF86 is a 127 page document titled “Questionnaire for National Security Positions” that asks questions about every aspect of a person’s life to include 1) Friends’ names, 2) Emotional and Psychological health, 3) use of alcohol and drugs 4) financial issues 5) affiliations with groups and more!  This information is much more personal and sensitive than just a social security administration.

I find it amusing that within 2 days of Target notifying that they had been victimized by criminals who stole millions of credit card numbers that the “Honorable” Senator Menendez (D NJ) a sitting US Senator (and “back porch preacher” who is now under criminal indictment) would deride Target and ask whether the: “…FTC has the teeth to hold retailers who failed to protect consumers’ information accountable,” He then continued: “if a company doesn’t invest in security to ensure customer data can’t be stolen, “then you have to question why a company would not do that.” The Target CFO would be forced to APOLOGIZE to the US Congress for security ‘failures’ yet when the OPM is breached the US Government distances itself from any liability.  This is sine qua non for any action in which the Federal Government fails..they simply deny that they failed.  According to OPM spokesperson Samuel Shumach:  (more…)