Essay About Use Of An Online Background Investigation System And Federal Employees

Office of Personnel Management
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On June 29, 2015, the U.S Office of Personnel Management (OPM) temporarily halted use of an online background investigation system.  The system is an electronic questionnaire for investigations processing that is web-based, known as e-QIP. The agency, however, says it does not believe that the vulnerability was exploited by attackers. “This proactive, temporary suspension of the e-QIP system will ensure our network is as secure as possible for the sensitive data with which OPM is entrusted.  Naval War College and former National Security Agency officer, have asked why OPM didnt take e-QIP offline sooner.  This quote from the article, stated by Archuleta, referring to the system’s known vulnerabilities, “were not shut down because doing so would have disrupted the U.S. governments ability to ensure that retirees received their benefits or that federal employees and contractors got paid.”  For the reason which they continued using the system before the recent decision to suspend its use, may now make those same disruptions last longer than they will be now… The policies are clearly not enforced, or reports would have had some efforts to mitigate the vulnerabilities, which could have even eliminated this from happening at all.  An employee and organization wide training on compliance and procedures of policies, regularly happening, as well as auditing, and review of such policies on a reoccurring schedule could have ensured better security measures were being used.