Office Personnel Managment hack now suspected also of stealing fingerprint data.
What can be done with a stolen fingerprint? Is it really only a foreign government coup? Can the Chinese government splinter groups use this information for other nefarious reasons?
{ Part of the worry, cybersecurity experts say, is that fingerprints are part of an exploding field of biometric data, which the government is increasingly getting in the business of collecting and storing. Fingerprints today are used to run background checks, verify identities at borders, and unlock smartphones, but the technology is expected to boom in the coming dcades in both the public and private sectors. }
Anything that we store digitally can be used by the “Bad Guys”
Since the bureaucrats were lax with data security at OPM now the Chinese or others are interested in grabbing as much data online as possible.
do you believe the Chinese president?
https://hacked.com/chinese-president-flatly-denies-state-sponsored-hacking-claims/
I don’t believe him. For one he probably does not control every small piece of the Chinese government completely. So it is impossible for him to say that.
Why am I Spending time explaining this? because the Chinese are on a a 5 year plan eternally, not the plan to grow next year. When you look at things in 5 year increments, then the world looks different.
We need to start to look at a longer time horizon when planning things. Plus whatever the spy agencies are working on now, the criminal hackers learn in a year or two.
So the Chinese may have the fingerprints of most government employees (or all) but in a year or two the criminals will have them. This is how it works.
If the NSA can do something like Stuxnet, then a few years later the criminals can do it.
So I am taking the long view – and I hope that you start to do this as well.
We all must get our cybersecurity act in gear the sooner the better.
http://oversitesentry.com/contact-us/