Is the OPM Data Breach the Tip of the Iceberg?

On June 4th, 2015, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced that it had identified a cybersecurity breach affecting personnel data for approximately 4 million current and former federal employees, including personally identifiable information (PII). As the investigation into the initial intrusion proceeded, the Interagency Response Team shared with relevant agencies that there was a high degree of confidence that OPM computer systems containing information on background investigations of current, former, and prospective Federal government employees, had been hacked. Early news reports, citing Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sources, estimate that sensitive, personal information of 18 million people have been hacked by these computer breaches. The number of cyber threats to both government and private sector information systems has grown exponentially in recent years. According to the U. S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the number of information security incidents reported by federal agencies to US-CERT increased from 5,503 in fiscal year 2006 to 67,168 in fiscal year 2014 - an increase of over 1000 percent.