The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency informed Congress and the administration Friday that a former employee had lost two thumb drives worth of files, a possible exposure of agency information that it said rose to the level of a “major information security incident.”
The agency, responsible for regulating national banks, said a former employee had downloaded “a large number of files” onto two thumb drives, and, when asked, didn’t know where the drives were.
The files were encrypted, the agency said, and there are no signs yet that any nonpublic or sensitive information has been misused.
Because the incident involved the unauthorized removal of over 10,000 files that could not be retrieved, the agency said, it was required under law to inform Congress and administrators.
The files were downloaded in November, and the agency only learned that they were lost in September. Protocols established in the meantime, the OCC said, would prevent a similar loss from happening now.
