Latest On Hack: Haley Assembles Cabinet, Questions Still Remain

On Thursday Gov. Nikki Haley assembled her cabinet at the Edgar Brown Building in Columbia to publicly discuss ways to improve outreach in the wake of the cyber attack that saw up to 3.6 million individuals and 657,000 businesses have their confidential data breached via Department of Revenue (DOR) records.

After the session, Haley said she is confident the cabinet will be able to significantly improve on the 521,000 people who have already signed up for a free credit monitoring service provide by Experion.

Starting on Friday at 8 a.m., businesses can sign up at DandB.com/sc or by calling 800-279-9881.

Individuals seeking credit protection should contact: 866-578-5422 or protectmyid.com/scdor and enter the passcode scdor123.

Nearly a week after the attack was first made public, questions still remain about the security breach.

Haley has been reluctant to point fingers and said no one would be fired over the incident, stating on several occasions that she did not believe it could have been prevented.

But not everyone agrees. The Greenville News reported that a professor who teaches data security at USC said, “procedures…were not playing together to provide adequate security.”

The Charleston Post and Courier reported that the DOR did not have in place a layer of data security provided by the state.

Media outlets have also reported that the hacker was able to enter the DOR system through an employee password. Of the nearly 700 DOR employees, it is believed that approximately 250 had the credentials to access the data that was compromised.

Haley said Thursday that the Inspector General is in the process of performing a thorough review of the state’s cyber security and dwelling on blame is a distraction. “We’re going to forward with what the Inspector General says we should do to prevent cyber attacks,” Haley said. “Everyone is looking for someone to blame. Everybody wants an answer. I do too. To guess (the cause of the breach) would be foolish.”

The breach has had a ripple effect on presidential politics, Haley informed the media on Thursday that a planned campaign stop in Ohio on behalf of Gov. Mitt Romney had been cancelled so she could tend to the crisis here.