Ultimately, Irish, an 18-year veteran of the department, and two other career employees were placed on leave. Irish was notified on April 4 that he would be removed from his job.
The case is particularly troubling because it’s a “significant, significant cybersecurity risk with having only one or two people have complete access to everything,” said Whitehouse, a former attorney at the Environmental Protection Agency. Historically, such access was divided among a number of people for security reasons.
“Foreign actors are trying to get access to this kind of information every day,” he said. “Now they only need to get to one person and everything is opened up to them.”
