Embarrassed by a series of security breaches, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced Monday that it will add new encryption technology on its laptops within the month.
The department has handed out a $3.7 million contract to Syracuse, N.Y.-based SMS Inc. and will begin encrypting computers Friday.
In May, a laptop containing the personal information of some 26.5 million veterans was stolen from an employee’s home.
Earlier this month, Unisys Corp., one of the department’s contractors, announced that it lost a desktop computer containing information on up to 38,000 veterans.
Agency officials hailed the encryption program as “a tremendous step forward.”
The Veterans Administration hasn’t been the only District agency to be embarrassed by the exposure of personal information. Earlier this year, financial services company ING announced that it had lost a laptop containing personal data on tens of thousands of D.C. government employees.
And the Department of Agriculture continues to investigate how a hacker got into its system in June.
Sources familiar with that investigation have said that a whistleblower within Agriculture has approached the FBI and warned that executives in the department are trying to torpedo the investigation.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
