Fewer than a quarter of 21 million federal workers hit by a major computer hack have been officially told that their personal information was compromised, six months after the breach was detected, a US government official said on Tuesday.
About 5 million notifications about the hack have been sent out so far, a spokesperson for the US office of personnel management (OPM) told Reuters in an email. The slowness of the notification process underscores Washington’s struggles in dealing with its computer vulnerabilities, a growing problem that the Obama administration has been trying to address.
After it fell victim to two successive cyber attacks, both begun in 2014 and revealed earlier this year, OPM was roundly criticised by lawmakers for its response.
OPM had no immediate additional comment on the matter on Tuesday, or on its expected notification timetable ahead.
