Department of Veterans Affairs officials say they are on their way toward preventing the recurrence of a humiliating data loss that occurred in May this year. A VA laptop computer and an external hard drive containing the personal information of 26.5 million veterans were stolen from the home of a VA employee.
The VA has instituted data security and awareness measures, including new directives on the transmission, transportation and use of data outside its facilities, said Robert Howard, the VA's chief information officer and assistant secretary for information and technology. It also completed mandatory annual security training for all employees and began encrypting all agency laptops that leave VA offices.
The May 3 theft, perhaps the single largest security breach in the history of the federal government, was compounded when officials failed to promptly inform senior executives, including VA Secretary Jim Nicholson. The VA then waited nearly three weeks before telling the public about the stolen data, which included veterans' names, birth dates and Social Security numbers.
Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, called the time lapse unbelievable.
In the several months following the theft, concerned lawmakers held several hearings with Nicholson, Howard and George Opfer the VA's inspector general.
Opfer told lawmakers that the IG office's mandatory reviews under the Federal Information Security Management Act had identified significant information security vulnerabilities since fiscal 2001 that placed VA at risk of external attacks, disruptions and unauthorized access to sensitive data.
"The vulnerabilities cannot be effectively resolved," Opfer said, as long as the VA's three administrations and other components operate on their own and are not accountable to the CIO.
An IG information security officer learned of the theft during a routine meeting May 10, when another information security officer mentioned that a VA analyst's home had been burglarized. The unnamed data analyst had been taking records home without permission since 2003 to work on a personal project, Opfer said. That VA data analyst was later fired.
Nicholson said he was "mad about the loss of veterans' data and the fact that one person had put many at risk." The VA had policy directives to safeguard sensitive information, but many employees viewed them as suggestions rather than as requirements, he said.
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