{"id":38992,"date":"2025-02-25T20:15:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-26T02:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=38992"},"modified":"2025-02-25T22:05:02","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T04:05:02","slug":"fired-cybersecurity-chief-for-veterans-affairs-site-warns-that-health-and-financial-data-is-at-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=38992","title":{"rendered":"Fired cybersecurity chief for Veterans Affairs site warns that health and financial data is at risk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BOSTON (AP) \u2014 Sensitive financial and health data belonging to millions of veterans<\/u><\/a> and stored on a benefits website is at risk of being stolen or otherwise compromised, according to a federal employee<\/u><\/a> tasked with cybersecurity who was recently fired as part of massive government-wide cuts<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The warning comes from Jonathan Kamens, who led cybersecurity efforts for VA.gov \u2014 an online portal for Department of Veterans Affairs<\/u><\/a> benefits and services used by veterans, their caregivers and families. Kamens was fired<\/u><\/a> Feb. 14 and said he doesn\u2019t believe his role will be filled, leaving the site particularly vulnerable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGiven how the government has been functioning for the last month, I don\u2019t think the people at VA … are going to be able to replace me,\u201d Kamens told The Associated Press Monday evening. \u201cI think they\u2019re going to be lacking essential oversight over cybersecurity processes for VA.gov.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kamens said he was hired over a year ago by the U.S. Digital Service<\/u><\/a>, whose employees\u2019 duties have been integrated<\/u><\/a> into presidential adviser Elon Musk\u2019s<\/u><\/a> Department of Government Efficiency, which is leading the downsizing effort. Kamens was a digital services expert and the VA site\u2019s information security lead when he was fired by email at night, along with about 40 other USDS employees, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Millions of people use the VA.gov website monthly, Kamens said, and the department is responsible for securing private health and financial information including bank account numbers and credit card numbers. Others on the team will focus on protecting the site, but his expertise can\u2019t be replaced, he said, noting he was the only government employee with an engineering technical background working on cybersecurity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cVA.gov has access to a huge number of databases within VA in order to provide all of those benefits and services to veterans,\u201d Kamens said. \u201cSo if that information can\u2019t be kept secure, then all of that information is at risk and could be compromised by a bad actor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter Kasperowicz, a Veterans Affairs spokesman, said the loss of a single employee wouldn\u2019t affect operations, and noted that hundreds of cybersecurity workers are among the department\u2019s staff of nearly 470,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, more than 20 civil service employees who\u2019d also previously worked for USDS resigned Tuesday<\/u><\/a> from DOGE, saying they refused to use their technical expertise to \u201cdismantle critical public services.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kamens said he was required to have a background check and a drug test before he was allowed to access any system containing veterans\u2019 data. He said he doesn\u2019t understand why Musk and DOGE shouldn\u2019t have to jump through the same hoops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think they should have access to that data,\u201d Kamens said. \u201cThese are people who have never been background-checked. They\u2019re not confirmed to be trustworthy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kamens also said he\u2019s worried that DOGE is \u201ctrying to break down the walls of decentralization\u201d that have kept data isolated in individual agencies. Centralization, he said, could increase the chances for abuse. He also described confusion since DOGE became involved \u2014 people didn\u2019t know who their manager was, work became isolated, and people were \u201cfrozen out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe only motive that I can think of,\u201d Kamens said, \u201cis exactly because they want to be able to use that data to harm citizens that they perceive as enemies of the state.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

apnews<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOSTON (AP) \u2014 Sensitive financial and health data belonging to millions of veterans and stored on a benefits website is at risk of being stolen or otherwise compromised, according to a federal employee tasked with cybersecurity who was recently fired as part of massive government-wide cuts. The warning comes from Jonathan Kamens, who led cybersecurity efforts for VA.gov \u2014 an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":38993,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1155],"tags":[27162,1609,1814,32479],"class_list":["post-38992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-cybersecurity","tag-fired","tag-risk","tag-veterans-affairs-sites"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38992"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38994,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38992\/revisions\/38994"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}