Last Call For Friday News Dump Time

OPM director Katherine Archuleta resigned this afternoon over Thursday’s “Well, you remember that 4 million people’s personal data hacked thing? Turns out it was 21 million plus in addition to that” story.

Ms. Archuleta went to the White House on Friday morning to personally inform Mr. Obama of her decision, saying that she felt new leadership was needed at the federal personnel agency to enable it to “move beyond the current challenges,” the official said. The president accepted her resignation. 

Beth Cobert, the deputy director of management at the Office of Management and Budget, will step in to temporarily replace Ms. Archuleta while a permanent replacement is found. 

Ms. Archuleta, who assumed her post in November 2013, had been under pressure to resign since last month, when she announced the first of two separate but related computer intrusions that compromised the personal information of 4.2 million current and former federal workers, including Social Security numbers, addresses, health and financial histories and other private details. 

On Thursday, she divulged the breach had also led to the theft of personal data of 21.5 million people who had applied for government background checks, likely affecting anyone subjected to such an investigation since 2000.

So yeah, that was going to happen.  She was convinced to fall on her sword after Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia started making calls, and Warner has a lot of pull when it comes to federal employees affected by the data breach, representing the state with the most in the country.

Not surprised by this in the least.  When your agency loses personal info on every active, retired and potential federal worker since 2000, most likely to China, then yeah, you're going to be asked to resign, I'm sorry.

Supposedly the thieves got away with the data by using an admin password.  Oldest trick in the book in both spycraft and social engineering.

Everyone, government and private sector, needs to up their information security game, and that means passwords and authentication methods that inconvenience you from time to time.  You don't like it?  This is what happens when the weakest link in data security comes into play: the people too lazy to protect it properly.

Get used to more and more stuff getting locked down where you work, folks.