White House may find more data breaches following security 'sprint'
When investigators discovered that the US Office of Personnel Management had suffered a massive data breach, the White House kicked off a 30-day cybersecurity "sprint" in hopes of boosting its defenses and checking for vulnerabilities. Well, that mad dash is over -- and the government might not like what it found. Chief Information Officer Tony Scott tells Reuters that there's a "realistic chance" that the feds will have word of more intrusions when they share details on July 20th. That kind of discovery won't be completely surprising given how much the US has come under attack, but it could make the OPM breach just one piece of a much larger puzzle.
As for preventing future disasters? That's a tougher call. Scott isn't yet saying how well each branch fared during the sprint, but he notes that "some will get there, and some won't." In other words, it's likely that numerous institutions will need to revamp their security policies, whether they're learning how to protect against hacks or limit the damage if and when someone gets in. That's not comforting if your information is stored at one of those behind-the-times institutions, but it beats finding out after a future incident.
[Image credit: AP Photo/Susan Walsh]
