National Guard data breach
National Guard.mil announces that Guard officials have lost control of your PII, in case the Chinese missed you at the OPM;
“All current and former Army National Guard members since 2004 could be affected by this breach because files containing personal information was inadvertently transferred to a non-DoD-accredited data center by a contract employee,” said Maj. Earl Brown, a spokesman for the National Guard Bureau. The data includes the Soldiers’ names, full Social Security numbers, dates of birth and home addresses.
So, you see it’s not really the Guard that lost your information, it was a contractor. Feel better?
Don’t worry, though, the National Guard in concerned;
“The National Guard Bureau takes the control of personal information very seriously,” Brown said. “After investigating the circumstances of these actions, and the information that was transferred, the Guard has determined, out of an abundance of caution, to inform current and past Guard personnel that their Personally Identifiable Information (PII) was among the files that were transferred.”
Every year, I had to waste my time taking these online classes about how to protect information. Basically, all you had to do to pass the tests was to use a little common sense. Was I the only one?
Category: National Guard
Now they should test that other side of the admin system, you know, the one that processes rank reductions and Letters of Reprimand to the OMPF for those that were “supervising” the contractor…just to make sure everything is still working OK.
Oh great. Now the national Guard. I wrote on another thread that the best intel the Chinese got from this breach, was the ins and outs to other federal systems tied to OPM. Why don’t we stop piecing this out and just give the Chinese access to the NPRC in St. Louis, the IRS and Social Security. /sarc/ But then again, they probably already have it, they’re just working their way through the most advantageous data first.
No shit, they (the Chinese) should just go ahead and take the online Inormation Awareness course offered by us, and be awarded SIPRNET access. Fuck it, just remove all the security bullshit, so we can access our own info without all the “security ” measures. Goddamn.
Why? Because not even the Chinese will sit through a Power Point!
Great, they make it impossible for me to access my official email on AKO for security reasons, then turn around and hand everything to the potential biggest enemy we would have to face. I think it is all part of a plan.
It wasn’t me!
What I don’t get is why we use Chinese manufactured components for our secure network infrastructure. Chinese made pc/laptop, Chinese made mouse/keyboard, Chinese made routers, etc. Any one of these items along the path could have hardware inside that makes the actions of a Snowden or a hapless idiot type irrelevant. I’m sure someone on the government payroll is responsible for evaluating and mitigating this risk, but I have a feeling they are the same brain trust responsible for keeping persons with felony arrest on their record from buying firearms.
I was surprised when I asked an S6 SNCO if we could plug an external USB keyboard into a SIPR laptop and his answer was, “yeah, no problem” with no concern in regards to where the keyboard came from.
Try finding electronics that are 100% American made. We’ll wait…. a long time. If it’s assembled in the US (fat chance) it is made with boards or components made somewhere in Asia. Mostly in China.
Oh, well, it’s just national security or something. Not really important. Nothing to see here. Business as usual.
But I do have to ask, since this is happening so often: when do we all get told we will be issued new socsec numbers as a precaution? And maybe we could choose them ourselves. And we could have the option of changing them on a monthly or even weekly basis… kind of like changing your login password regularly.
Well, I can dream, can’t I?
Great so my Army Record is owned by the Chinese. And now my guard record…
I hope they can organize better then Uncle Sam can…
NDSMs for everybody. Yeah, I was in the Supersecretpornstar Warrior program. I did not have to have any special training due to my native American background. It is not in my records because of the data breach of ’15.
Last time my information was stolen, it was because some idiot Colonel left a laptop with the entirety of the Oregon Army National Guard’s manning list (name, SSN, DOB, PEBD, address) on it. His window was broken and it was stolen from his car. Now, this.
Is the entirety of the federal government so careless that they would rather ignore any breaches and pass the blame than actually strengthen its data security.
Yes.
Who is penalized when data is stolen? Essentially no one. You want to get people paying attention to something like security, you have to apply penalties when they screw the pooch. The head of OPM was allowed to resign, I’ll bet with all benefits – and I’ll bet cash green money that she shows up in an equally high-paying government job within a month. Or will be filing for 100% disability due to the stress. Now if when someone loses info due to their own stupidity they lose their job, their retirement, their freedom for a few years – maybe you start getting their attention. If we ran the Manhattan Project and D-Day like we do security now, we’d probably be speaking Russian east of the Mississippi and Japanese to the west.
Sitting here in the belly of the beast, Arlington Hall, and this is how I find out? No official notification to individuals?