OPM director resigns after unprecedented data breach

The director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management resigned on Friday, a day after her agency announced hackers had stolen information on 21.5 million current, former and prospective government employees and their families.

Katherine Archuleta said she had informed President Barack Obama of her plans to step down, and he had accepted her resignation.

“I conveyed to the President that I believe it is best for me to step aside and allow new leadership to step in, enabling the agency to move beyond the current challenges and allowing the employees at OPM to continue their important work,” she said in an email to employees.

Archuleta had been at the agency for less than two years, joining in November 2013 at about the time the agency began an upgrade of its cyberdefenses. It was as part of that upgrade that it discovered two separate ongoing breaches that, investigators concluded, were unprecedented in their size and seriousness.

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