Technology

311VET can provide information about most VA benefits, including pension, education, health, disability, loan, burial and career benefits.

Last week, the story of an Airman who was targeted by an online job scammer was shared widely within our community. This story included a false claim that the Veterans Employment CenterTM (VEC) website was breached. I want to make it clear that there was no breach of information on the VEC site. The VEC puts the safety and security of Servicemembers, Veterans, and their families first by storing only general profile information, such as email addresses. The VEC does not store resumes, addresses, phone numbers, dates of separation, or any personally identifiable information (PII). VA reports all suspicious activity, suspected corporate fraud, or phishing activities immediately to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and we immediately referred this case to them once we discovered a Veteran had been targeted by an online job scammer.

This initiative aims to accelerate the development of personalized technologies to better care for Veterans by bringing together individuals from different backgrounds.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and The Center for Open Data Enterprise are co-hosting an Open Data Roundtable in the Indian Treaty Room of Eisenhower Executive Office Building May 6 to form a collaborative network between VA and data users. Open data, particularly machine-readable information, is data made available to the public by government agencies that can provide a great deal of valuable information to researchers and advocates.

VA serves Veterans and their families by maintaining robust information security controls, utilizing a multi-layered, “defense in depth,” approach to securing Veteran data. However, no organization, no matter how advanced its safeguards, is immune to risks associated with simple human error. When an incident that violates a VA security or privacy policy occurs and VA safeguards fall short, VA has a comprehensive incident response plan to proactively address the situation and limit risk and recovery time.

VA holds personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI) for nearly 9 million Veterans, and we take that very seriously. We know that this sensitive information holds the key to the livelihood and well-being for those that have given so much to this country. Information security and privacy are top priorities for VA, and our employees treat protecting Veteran information as both a professional and personal concern.

VA’s More Than a Number program seeks to educate Veterans and their families about identity theft prevention, providing information on ways to protect personal data and on steps to take if you think that data has become compromised. Read below for some of the tips that can be found on the More than a Number website:

As our world becomes increasingly connected, protecting sensitive information is more important now than ever before. VA has an obligation to safeguard the data we hold on Veterans, and we take that obligation seriously by making information security and privacy a top priority. VA employs progressive security measures to protect data and secure the VA network and its information technology (IT) systems through a “defense in depth” approach.

In the VA Office of Information and Technology (OI&T), women play a significant role in achieving VA’s goals. In fact, more than 25 percent of VA OI&T’s Senior Executive Service positions are held by women. Compare that to private industry, where, according to the Center for American Progress, women hold only nine percent of management positions in the IT field and account for just over 14 percent of executive officer positions at Fortune 500 companies. Women in IT leadership at VA spearhead some of the agency’s crucial missions, such as ensuring the security of Veteran health information, implementing VA’s electronic health record, transforming Veterans benefits delivery, managing how IT dollars are spent, and gathering and analyzing IT data.