“The US Air Force has lost records concerning 100,000 investigations into everything from workplace disputes to fraud,” the Defense One website reported earlier this week.
“Neither the Air Force nor Lockheed Martin, the defense firm that runs the database, could say why it became corrupted or whether they’ll be able to recover the information.”
The Air Force has begun asking for assistance from cybersecurity professionals at the Pentagon as well as from private contractors.
“We’ve kind of exhausted everything we can to recover within [the Air Force] and now we’re going to outside experts to see if they can help,” the website quotes Ann Stefanek, an Air Force spokeswoman at the Pentagon, as saying.
Apparently Lockheed Martin spent two weeks trying to fix the problem before informing the Air Force, but had to report on their failure when the issue proved insurmountable.
The Automated Case Tracking System, which kept the records of investigations into possible sexual assaults, IG complaints, investigations, appeals and Freedom Of Information Act requests has been unreachable.
“Through extensive data recovery efforts over the weekend and this week, the Air Force has been able to regain access to the data in the Air Force Inspector General Automated Case Tracking System (ACTS),” Defense One quotes the statement as saying.
The Air Force chief of staff said that the effort to recover the files involved Lockheed Martin and Oracle, the two defense contractors that run the database, plus Air Force cybercrime personnel.
Once the database is deemed stable, it will be brought back online, the statement said.
“Hopefully, we’ll be able to get this data recovered and there won’t be a long-term impact, other than making sure we understand exactly what happened, how it happened and how we keep it from ever happening again,” the website quotes Gen. Mark Welsh as finally saying.
