Former Department of Homeland Security intelligence official Charles Allen believes the recent OPM breach was one of the greatest compromises to our national security ever. The larger cybersecurity and intelligence communities agree with Allen, including Haystax’ chief technology officer Bryan Ware, who shared some words of caution with ThirdCertainty in the wake of the breach: “Once a system that’s connected to so many other systems is compromised, there is a potential for widespread compromise that will likely have ripple effects for some time…without even compromising a person by using his personal information to coerce him, there is enough information in this data to successfully steal or forge an identity and perhaps use that identity to gain access to information. Bryan also recommended next steps for the government to address existing vulnerabilities to ensure national security isn’t further compromised: “We have to determine if our existing construct for collecting, storing and integrating this data across agencies is still the right construct. But, most importantly, we need to have a robust counterintelligence program to identify personnel who might be vulnerable to a foreign intelligence service.” Click here to read the full piece on ThirdCertainty