Veterans Data at Risk

Don’t know how much of this pure spreading of Fear Uncertainty and Doubt but would offer that if the possibility exists that it might have some truth to it it probably needs much wider distribution than my email distribution group and the sharing on a social network or two!

from Federal News Radio

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“The entire veteran database in VA containing personally identifiable information on roughly 20 million veterans is not encrypted and evidence suggests that it has been repeatedly compromised since 2010 by foreign actors by China and possibly by Russia,” said subcommittee chairman Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), during a hearing Tuesday. “Recently, the subcommittee discussed VA’s authorization to operate, a formal declaration that authorizes operation of a product on VA’s network which explicitly accepts the risk to agency operations, and was told that ‘VA’s security posture was never at risk.’ In fact, VA’s security posture has been an unacceptable risk for at least three years as sophisticated actors use weaknesses in VA’s security posture to exploit the system and remove veterans’ information and system passwords. These actors have had constant access to VA systems and data, information which included unencrypted databases containing hundreds of thousands to millions of instances of veteran information such as veterans’ and dependents’ names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and protected health information.”

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