On Friday, Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar joined House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), along with 16 Republican Members of Congress, in sending a letter to President Obama requesting the removal of Katherine Archuleta as Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and Ms. Donna Seymour, OPM Chief Information Officer (CIO) after a massive data breach compromised the Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of millions of past, current, and prospective federal employees.
The House Oversight Committee conducted hearings this month on June 16th and June 24th, examining the OPM data breach.
The letter notes that the breach of OPM’s network is especially alarming because the information that the hackers accessed could include data related to security clearances, and could do as far back as 1985.
The letter reads in part: “In her testimony before the committee, OPM director Catherine Archuleta stated that “there is a high degree of confidence that OPM systems related to background investigations of current, former, and prospective Federal government employees, and those for home federal background investigation was conducted may have been compromised,” and “any federal employees across all branches of government, whose organization submitted service records to OPM, may have been compromised. One former intelligence community official referred to the stolen data as the “crown jewels” and a “goldmine for foreign intelligence service.”
“There is no excuse for failing to encrypt sensitive data at rest, require multi factor authentication for remote access to critical systems, and properly segment data within the network among other things that OPM failed to do.”
“Simply put, the recent breach was entirely foreseeable, and Director Archuleta and CIO Donna Seymour failed to take steps to prevent it from happening despite repeated warnings,” the letter continues.
“We listened closely to both Director Archuleta’s and Ms. Seymour’s testimony before the Committee. We have lost confidence in Director Archuleta’s ability to secure OPM’s networks and protect the data of millions of Americans. We have also lost confidence in OPM CIO Donna Seymour’s ability to do the same. This country’s hard working federal employees deserve better, and Americans with security clearances whose lives may now be at risk deserve better. These systems are too important to leave unsecured,” wrote Chaffetz.
“Therefore, we respectfully request that you address this serious issue by removing Director Archuleta and Ms. Seymour from their positions.”
Your tax dollars at work…………..