Protection against IRS and OPM-type hacks available to government agencies but not always used

Government Security News: Multi-factor authentication – a security protection required by US government standards – could have prevented the recent Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Office of Personnel Management (OPM) security breaches that have exposed the personal information of millions of citizens to hackers, spies and cyber-criminals. The Federal government has been encouraging its agencies to use multi-factor authentication since November 2009, when it published the FICAM (Federal Identity and Access Management) Roadmap and Implementation Guidance. To date not one of the agencies adopting it has experienced an authentication-based breach.

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