Officials at the National Archives and Records Administration are dealing with a serious data security dilemma after discovering that a hard drive containing the names, Social Security numbers and other details of former Clinton staffers and White House visitors was either lost or stolen more than a year ago. eSecurity Planet digs into the details behind one of the government’s largest data security mishaps and exactly what information may have been compromised.
A hard drive was either lost or stolen from processing room at the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Md. sometime between October 2008 and February 2009, putting at risk the personal information of more than 250,000 Clinton administration staffers, White House visitors and job applicants.
The data, including at least 100,000 Social Security numbers, was placed on the Western Digital My Book external drive as part of a routine recopying process to ensure preservation of the information, according to NARA officials.
NARA learned the drive was missing in March when it restarted a hard drive analysis project it initiated to reduce the amount of time staff spent validating data on the hard drive.
However, the drive was last accounted for sometime between October 2008 and early February 2009,” NARA officials said in a statement. “Thus, if the data has been misused or otherwise used to commit fraud or identity theft crimes, it is possible that affected individuals could have suspicious activity beginning as early as October 2008.”s
