FEMA data breach exposed personal information of 2.5 million disaster survivors, agency official says
By Joel Achenbach , Joel Achenbach Reporter covering science and politics Email Bio William Wan and William Wan National correspondent covering health, science and news Email Bio Follow Tony Romm Tony Romm Staff writer covering technology policy Email Bio Follow March 22 at 6:42 PM The Federal Emergency Management Agency shared personal addresses and banking information of more than 2 million U.S. disaster survivors in what the agency acknowledged Friday was a “major privacy incident.
In a statement, FEMA Press Secretary Lizzie Litzow said the breach happened because “FEMA provided more information than was necessary” while transferring disaster survivor information to a contractor. He said 1.8 million people had both their banking information and addresses revealed, and about 725,000 people had just their addresses shared.“We don’t have any information that it has been compromised in a detrimental fashion,” the DHS official said.
The Inspector General report told FEMA it needed to install controls to make sure such data would not continue to be shared with contractors and that the agency needed to assess how wide the breach was and to make sure that data in the contractor’s system was destroyed.
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