…the more they stay the same at the Office of Personnel Management.
After last week’s startling revelation of the unparalleled hack of 14 million Washington personnel files, the OPM’s response was to put federal workers in greater danger of becoming victims of phishing schemes.
No, seriously:
Computer experts said the personnel agency — already under fire from lawmakers from both parties for failing to protect sensitive databases from hackers — could be putting federal systems in jeopardy again by asking employees to click on links in the e-mails.
“There’s a risk that you desensitize people by telling them that occasionally, there’s going to be a very important email you have to click on,” said Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist at the Center for Democracy & Technology.
He called OPM’s first round of e-mail transmissions the equivalent of “sending a postcard to people saying gee, you just got hacked, go to this website. The hackers could wise up and send their own set of fake identity protection e-mails and get into your computers all over again.”
It’s idiots all the way down.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member