Tester: Dysfunction at OPM is unacceptable

(U.S. Senate) – Senator Jon Tester, a senior member of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, released the following statement after it was announced that the private information of now over 25 million federal employees was stolen due to data security breaches at the Office of Personnel and Management (OPM).

“Today’s report is unacceptable. We need complete transparency from OPM about what happened and what they are doing to ensure this never happens again. We need these answers now. I am incredibly concerned for the millions of hard-working folks who are now potentially at risk because of the lack of data security at OPM. Some of these people have access to classified information, which means this breach may have jeopardized national security as well. I call on the Senate Homeland Security Committee to hold a hearing on efforts to mitigate the impacts of this breach and to prevent future breaches. We don’t need finger-pointing; we need solutions. We need to hold OPM accountable, but we also need to give them the tools to safeguard the private information of our citizens.”

Earlier this week, Tester called on OPM’s Inspector General to further investigate the potential security vulnerabilities of OPM’s data system that houses personal background investigation information.