The Pentagon this month plans to distribute a new policy on personal social media use that tells troops to hide certain identifying information when interacting online, Defense Department officials tell Nextgov.
Increasingly, hackers are gleaning sensitive work details from social networks by drawing inferences from posts, such as military unit locations, and by penetrating the actual sites. Defense officials on Thursday acknowledged they are aware of a reported MilitarySingles.com breach that may have exposed soldiers’ dot-mil e-mail addresses and passwords.
“Our future instruction that specifically addresses use of commercial social media will direct all DoD employees to ‘Use non-mission related contact information, such as telephone numbers or postal and email addresses, to establish personal accounts, when such information is required,’” Defense spokeswoman Lt. Col. April Cunningham said in a statement.”
The directive is expected to be released in late May.
Despite the forthcoming policy, dot-mil email addresses may still appear in some personal communications, partly because family members and guests using the Army Knowledge Online service are issued military addresses, Cunningham said.
Aliya Sternstein
Aliya Sternstein reports on cybersecurity and homeland security systems for Nextgov. She has covered technology for nine years at such publications as National Journal's TechnologyDaily, Federal Computer Week and Forbes. Before joining Government Executive, she covered agriculture and derivatives trading for Congressional Quarterly. She has been a guest commentator on C-SPAN, WTOP and Federal News Radio. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.
Continuous Monitoring As a Service: A Shift in the Way Government Does Business
Research Report: Powering Continuous Monitoring Through Big Data
Addressing the 3 Biggest BYOD Security Threats
Mobile Apps: New Ways to Connect Government with Citizens
JOIN THE DISCUSSION
By using this service you agree not to post material that is obscene, harassing, defamatory, or otherwise objectionable. Although Nextgov does not monitor comments posted to this site (and has no obligation to), it reserves the right to delete, edit, or move any material that it deems to be in violation of this rule.