Rep. Gerry Connolly Statement on Cyber Attack on OPM Computers

Press Release

Congressman Gerry Connolly issued the following statement in reaction to the discovery of a second, major cyber-attack on Office of Personnel Management (OPM) computers that compromised personnel data of about 4 million current and former federal employees.

"Thursday's report of a second data breach at OPM is very disturbing. Based on the cyber-signatures and method of attack, all indications point to Chinese hackers. But there is a lot we don't know yet and the investigation is ongoing. In this instance, the Department of Homeland Security initially detected malicious activity in April and determined in May that OPM systems were breached.

"While improvements have been made to protect federal government computer systems from such cyberattacks, this latest breach is one more reason federal agencies must continue to implement more proactive cyber-security measures. Such measures should include aggressive implementation of the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA), which requires the government to universally adopt precisely the type of proactive measures that detected this most recent data breach.

"We must also work towardmore dynamic security options which conduct continuous, 24-7 monitoring of government computers to discover malicious indicators of cyberattacks in real time."

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