The Human Cost of the Hack on OPM and Its National Security Impact

From the Lawfare blog:

The Human Cost of the Hack on OPM and Its National Security Impact

By now, everyone knows about the OPM hack and the fact that the private and sensitive information compromised may make employees of the U.S. government—especially those with security clearances—more subject to blackmail, bribery, or extortion and more vulnerable to more realistic phishing attacks.  But there’s one more aspect that needs airing.

According to OPM, the hack compromised data for 4.2 million current and former government employees. Median tenure for a US Government employee is 8.5 years according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Since many of the compromised records (specifically the information derived from background investigations) go back to 2000, my conservative guesstimate for the number of current employees affected is 1 million of the total 2.8 million employed by the U.S. government.