Pinkerton Insights Podcast

As reported last week, the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency has informed that due to a mistake, the data of 2.3 million beneficiaries of the Transitional Sheltering Assistance program was exposed. FEMA declared that it shared the database which contained unnecessary data like date of birth, residential address, and in some cases sensitive data linked to bank accounts with an outside; reportedly, the agency revealed the financial data of at least 1.8 million people affected by the hurricanes Maria, Irma, and Harvey. Currently, the Agency has taken corrective steps to delete the information from the contractor’s system; furthermore, it has updated the contract with the contractor to guarantee the compliance of its information exchange and cyber-security protocols.  We assess that because of the nature of the exposed data, this breach is likely to pose a significant threat to the impacted persons. Fraud and identity theft are the crimes that likely could happen if a malicious actor got a hold of