(U.S. Senate) – U.S. Senator Jon Tester, Ranking Member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, is leading his colleagues in demanding answers from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) following a recent data breach that compromised 46,000 veterans’ personal information. VA officials informed the Senate and House Committees on Veterans’ Affairs that approximately 17,000 VA community care providers were also impacted by the cybersecurity breach.

“This most recent data breach is unacceptable,” Tester and his colleagues wrote to VA Secretary Robert Wilkie. “It also exposes the fact that VA has not taken the necessary steps to ensure oversight, accountability, and security of the vast financial, health, and other personal data it collects and processes to perform its critical services for America’s veterans. Incidents such as these impact individual veteran’s lives as well as those who partner with VA to provide services to them. It is imperative VA take aggressive and decisive action to address this current incident and lay out a strategy to prevent such problems from arising in the future.”

The Senators also highlighted concerns over VA measures to protect other important data within its vast data systems and networks. They laid out a series of direct questions to ensure that the Department takes necessary steps to address vulnerabilities and protect the information of veterans and community providers in the future.

Read the Senators’ letter to VA Secretary Wilkie HERE.