Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records
June 15th, 2016Via: Government Executive:
The U.S. Air Force has lost records concerning 100,000 investigations into everything from workplace disputes to fraud.
A database that hosts files from the Air Force’s inspector general and legislative liaison divisions became corrupted last month, destroying data created between 2004 and now, service officials said. 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.
Lockheed tried to recover the information for two weeks before notifying the Air Force, according to a service statement.
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,” said Ann Stefanek, an Air Force spokeswoman at the Pentagon.
For now, Air Force officials don’t believe the crash was caused intentionally.
