Breaches and incidents
Federal Reserve Board: departing employee potentially removed FOMC classified and other sensitive files, OIG report
The Fed OIG’s 24 Sep report (2026-MO-B-014R) concerns “a departing Board employee who potentially removed Federal Open Market Committee classified and...
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What happened
- The Fed OIG’s 24 Sep report (2026-MO-B-014R) concerns “a departing Board employee who potentially removed Federal Open Market Committee classified and other sensitive information”; per FedScoop the employee triggered 279 data loss prevention alerts in the last 90 days of employment, copied files to unencrypted USB drives (2021, 2023) and emailed material to personal addresses before retiring in July 2024.
- Root cause: insider removal of data, with the OIG citing “a collective lack of action across multiple divisions” (per Banking Dive) and concluding the 2024 incident “was not fully resolved and the removed information was not fully retrieved” (per FedScoop).
- No external attacker named; the employee travelled to a country the Board designates as restricted (per FedScoop and Banking Dive).
- The OIG made nine recommendations; per Banking Dive the Board agreed and plans clearer escalation by Q1 2027 and a new DLP solution by Q3 2027.