This story has been updated.
The Office of Personnel Management is alerting more than 48,000 federal employees their personal information may have been exposed following a breach at KeyPoint Government Solutions, which conducts background investigations of federal employees seeking security clearances.
The total number of employees affected is 48,439, according to an email from OPM Chief Information Officer Donna Seymour obtained by Nextgov.
Seymour said OPM worked closely with the Department of Homeland Security to investigate the incident, “and while we found no conclusive evidence that [personally identifiable information] was taken by the intruder, OPM has elected to conduct these notifications out of an abundance of caution.”
Affected employees will receive free credit monitoring.
DHS spokesman S.Y. Lee on Thursday evening told Nextgov the breach was detected by a DHS entity.
"Recently, the DHS National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center became aware of a potential intrusion of a private sector company that conducts U.S. government security background investigations for OPM," he said in a statement. "Working with OPM and other interagency partners, the NCCIC, per standard procedure, deployed an on-site [U.S.-Computer Emergency Readiness Team] to assess and mitigate any risks identified."
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