Sen. Mark Warner urged OPM’s acting director to ensure identity protection services continue for the more than 21 million individuals affected by the 2015 breach.
A top Senate Intelligence Democrat is warning the Office of Personnel Management against cancelling identity protection services that have been provided to current and former federal employees since their data was exposed in the massive 2015 OPM data breach.
In a letter sent Friday to OPM acting Director Charles Ezell, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., expressed concerns about Department of Government Efficiency-instituted cuts to the personnel agency and plans that it may have to “curtail identity theft monitoring for millions of public servants and their families whose information was compromised in 2015.”
“I urge you to ensure that identity theft protection services for the impacted individuals from the 2015 OPM breach continue, as required by law,” wrote Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
The breach of OPM servers by Chinese-backed hackers rocked Washington and the federal workforce a decade ago, as the Social Security numbers, birthdates, addresses and other personal information of more than 21 million individuals were exposed.
What protections? They paid for ONE year of monitoring.