Washington, D.C. – House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) today welcomed the resignation of Office of Personnel and Management Director Katherine Archuleta. Archuleta announced Friday that she would step down following recent news of data breaches that compromised the personal information of more than 20 million federal employees.
Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas): “Director Archuleta is doing the right thing by stepping down. This is a necessary step in holding the government accountable for security failures, but it should certainly not be the last. My Committee will continue to seek more information about who is responsible for this breach and what needs to be done to protect Americans from cyber-attacks.”
Smith called for Archuleta to step down in an interview with Sinclair Broadcasting, just hours before news broke of her resignation on Friday afternoon.
In a joint Wednesday hearing of the Subcommittee on Research & Technology and the Subcommittee on Oversight, witnesses identified numerous existing vulnerabilities to federal agency systems. Witnesses also discussed other breaches that were recently made public but were under-reported, including a breach of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs system, the U.S. Postal Service, and the Department of Defense.
According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the number of cybersecurity incidents reported by federal agencies has increased over 1,000 percent in the last eight years. In 2014, more than 67,000 cyber-attacks were reported. Private sector data breaches that cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars every year are also on the rise.