Chaffetz demands access to compromised OPM security documents

The House Oversight Committee is demanding that the Office of Personnel Management turn over documentation related to network security guides that the OPM says were compromised when the agency was hacked this spring.

In a June hearing, OPM chief information officer Donna Seymour told the committee that the hackers took “outdated security documents about our systems and some manuals about our systems,” in addition to the personal data of up to 22 million government employees, contractors and others.

{mosads}House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz’s (R-Utah) panel is concerned that those documents could be used by hackers to launch additional attacks on the agency’s networks.

“It would be far to say that [the stolen documents] would give you enough information that you could learn about the platform, the infrastructure of our system,” Seymour told the committee in June.

Chaffetz is demanding that the beleaguered agency turn over all security documents describing OPM systems, as well as a copy of any information security protocols required for those documents.

The committee also wants access to any communications relating to the discovery of the unauthorized access to those documents by hackers and a detailed description of any actions the agency or its contractors took in response.

“The fact that security documents and systems manuals were accessed and taken from the network as discovered in March 2014 heightened the need for OPM to protect its network,” Chaffetz wrote in a Tuesday letter to the agency.

Chaffetz has led the charge in condemning OPM leadership for allowing the attack, calling for then-director Katherine Archuleta and Seymour to either step down or be fired.

Archuleta resigned in July. Chaffetz is still campaigning for the removal of Seymour, sending a letter to acting director Beth Cobert earlier this month calling for the CIO’s removal.

Seymour is “unfit to perform the significant duties for which she is responsible,” he wrote. “I urge the immediate removal of Ms. Seymour from her position.”