Pierluigi Paganini March 24, 2019

The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) has disclosed a data leak that exposed banking details and other personal information of 2.3 million survivors.

In case of national disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) offers a program called Transitional Sheltering Assistance (TSA) that provides shelter to survivors. 

News of the day is that FEMA has admitted a data leak that exposed banking details and other personal information of 2.3 million survivors.

An unnamed contractor of the US Agency had accidentally received more information than it ever needed to know.

“FEMA, in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General (DHS OIG), identified an incident involving the sharing of sensitive, personally identifiable information of disaster survivors using the Transitional Sheltering Assistance program.”reads the data breach notification published by FEMA.

“In transferring disaster survivor information to a contractor, FEMA provided more information than was necessary.”

Since the discovery of the issue, the FEMA agency quickly adopted measures to solve the problem. FEMA announced that it will no longer share unnecessary data with the contractor and is currently reviewing information shared with contractors.

The data accidentally shared with the contractor included bank transit and electronic funds routing numbers, and address.

“The 2.3 million people include survivors of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria and the 2017 California wildfires.The data includes “20 unnecessary data fields” such as electronic funds transfer number, bank transit number, and address.” reads an article published by CNN.

“The data was part of a stream of information the agency feeds to the housing contractor, whose name was redacted from the public version of the inspector general’s report.”

Exposed data are dated back 2017 and are related to 2.3 million survivors of the California wildfires, and Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria.

The good news is that survivor data has not been compromised.

“To date, FEMA has found no indicators to suggest survivor data has been compromised,” said the agency’s press secretary Lizzie Litzow.

“FEMA has also worked with the contractor to remove the unnecessary data from the system and updated its contract to ensure compliance with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cybersecurity and information-sharing standards.”

The agency is already working with the contractor to delete leaked information from its systems.

“To date, FEMA has found no indicators to suggest survivor data has been compromised. FEMA has also worked with the contractor to remove the unnecessary data from the system and updated its contract to ensure compliance with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cybersecurity and information-sharing standards.” states the FEMA.

“As an added measure, FEMA instructed contracted staff to complete additional DHS [Department of Homeland Security] privacy training,”

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – Data Leak, FEMA)

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