Postal Service Says Cyber Official Retiring
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Chuck McGann was a key player in the Postal Service's response to the recent cyber intrusion.
This post has been updated.
A week after the U.S. Postal Service publicly revealed an online breach of Postal Service personnel files affecting as many as 800,000 workers, one of the agency’s top cybersecurity officials is retiring.
Charles McGann, the head of the agency’s Corporate Information Security Office, is retiring after 27 years with the agency, a USPS spokesman confirmed to Nextgov.
The spokesman did not immediately say when McGann’s last day with the agency would be but said the retirement was not connected to the cyberincident.
McGann spent the last four years at the agency as the head of the information security office, where he was “responsible for overseeing the information security of one of the largest technology networks maintained by any organization in the world,” Dave Partenheimer, the spokesman, said in an email. “He also was a key player in the Postal Service’s successful response to the recent cyber intrusion."
The Postal Service on Nov. 10 joined a growing list of federal agencies to disclose data breaches in recent weeks, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the White House’s executive office and, most recently, the State Department.
According to postal officials, suspicious activity on the agency’s information systems was detected in mid-September. However, postal employees were not notified of the hack until last week.
Potentially compromised information includes employees’ names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, physical addresses and other personal information. The Postal Service plans to offer employees a year of free credit monitoring through Equifax.
The delay in notifying employees of the breach raised the ire of both postal-employee unions and congressional overseers.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has planned a hearing on the breach scheduled for Wednesday, 10:30 a.m.
McGann’s departure also comes amid a broader overhaul at the financially beleaguered Postal Service. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe, who’s led the agency since 2010, recently announced he would step down in February.