Dive Brief:

• The Obama administration is assessing last week's massive data breach involving the agency that handles security clearances and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) which manages government employee records.
• Suspicion quickly fell on China, according to media reports.
• The OPM is the HR department for the federal government and also does checks for security clearances. The breach could potentially expose personal data four million people at every federal agency, employees past and present.

Dive Insight:

Chinese officials denied their country being behind the attacks. as a foreign ministry spokesman called the U.S. "irresponsible and unscientific" in making the charges without a thorough investigation.

“The FBI is conducting an investigation to identify how and why this occurred,” the department of homeland security said in a statement. “DHS is continuing to monitor federal networks for any suspicious activity and is working aggressively with the affected agencies to conduct investigative analysis to assess the extent of this alleged intrusion.”

This latest headline-making data breach is a strong reminder that employee data security should always receive the proper focus from HR. If the federal government's HR records can be hacked, then HR executives across the globe can't feel too confident about their own company's data safety, even with the best cybersecurity measures in place. Most of all, the industry would do well to partner with IT and the company CIO, if one exists, to ensure both strong data security and a post-breach plan should one occur.