http://fcw.com/articles/2013/08/21/veterans-affairs-data-breaches.aspx
By Frank Konkel
FCW.com
Aug 21, 2013
Privacy is paramount in the Department of Veterans Affairs, and a small
interagency team plays a large role in how the federal government responds
to potential breaches in the privacy of its veterans.
Each week, at least some of the Data Breach Core Team's 30 members gather
to pore over suspected data breaches reported through the agency's Privacy
Security Event Tracking System, determining whether an incident is an
actual breach. The DBCT assigns a risk categorization – low, medium or
high – to each potential breach and determines whether VA should offer
credit monitoring to veterans in each case.
The weekly sessions highlight a transformation the agency went through
following the disastrous data breach in 2006 that might have exposed the
personal data of 26 million veterans, according to John Oswalt, VA's
associate deputy assistant secretary for privacy, policy and incident
response.
The 2006 breach – the result of the theft of a VA analyst's laptop and
external drive, which were eventually recovered intact – cost taxpayers
millions of dollars and damaged VA's public reputation and its trust with
the veterans it was charged to protect. It also highlighted internal
inadequacies in how VA reported and responded to potential breaches –
then-VA Secretary James Nicholson was not notified about the incident
until three weeks after it took place.
[...]
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