Information About the Recent OPM Cybersecurity Incident

Yesterday, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced that the federal government was victim to a massive cyber-attack in April that has resulted in the potential compromising of personal and financial information of up to four million current and former federal employees.

Since the incident was identified, OPM has partnered with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to determine the impact to Federal personnel.

Beginning June 8 and continuing through June 19, OPM will be sending notifications to approximately 4 million individuals whose Personally Identifiable Information was potentially compromised in this incident.  The email will come from opmcio@csid.com and it will contain information regarding credit monitoring and identity theft protection services being provided to those Federal employees impacted by the data breach. In the event OPM does not have an email address for the individual on file, a standard letter will be sent via the U.S. Postal Service.

In order to mitigate the risk of fraud and identity theft, OPM is offering affected individuals credit monitoring services and identity theft insurance with CSID, a company that specializes in identity theft protection and fraud resolution. This comprehensive, 18-month membership includes credit report access, credit monitoring, identity theft insurance, and recovery services and is available immediately at no cost to affected individuals identified by OPM.

Additional information is available beginning at 8 a.m. CST on June 8, 2015 on the company’s website, www.csid.com/opm, and by calling toll-free 844-222-2743 (International callers: call collect 512-327-0700).

“This data breach is a very serious concern,” said NFFE National President William R. Dougan. “Federal employees across the country just found out their private information has been stolen, and they are rightfully angry and concerned about that. Right now, NFFE is working to inform our membership of the data breach and distributing the guidance provided by OPM through our widest communication channels. Federal employees should notify their personal financial institutions about the breach and work to develop a strategy that will increase the monitoring of personal and financial information for potentially fraudulent activity.”

 

“Unfortunately, once a thing like this happens, there is not much OPM can do afterward to fix it except try to make sure it does not happen again,” said National President Dougan. “That is no consolation for all the hard-working federal workers across the country who now have their social security numbers and other private information compromised. We are going to demand timely information from OPM so that federal workers are not left in the dark with details about the scope of this attack. We are going to make sure the agency provides ample assistance to mitigate the damage of this data breach for those impacted by it. Finally, we are going to demand that OPM fix their system so that this sort of violation of privacy and security never happens to federal employees again. NFFE will hold OPM accountable for their promises to federal employees following this attack.”

 

For more information on what federal employees can do to protect themselves and mitigate any potential security compromises, visit the OPM website: http://www.opm.gov/news/latest-news/announcements/