THIS WEEK’S FRIDAY NIGHT NEWS DUMP: Army National Guard Announces Data Breach:

This incident is unrelated to the breach of federal civilian employee personal information reported last week and on Thursday by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), officials confirmed.

“All current and former Army National Guard members since 2004 could be affected by this breach because files containing personal information was inadvertently transferred to a non-DoD-accredited data center by a contract employee,” said Maj. Earl Brown, a spokesman for the National Guard Bureau.  The data includes the Soldiers’ names, full Social Security numbers, dates of birth and home addresses.

“The National Guard Bureau takes the control of personal information very seriously,” Brown said.  “After investigating the circumstances of these actions, and the information that was transferred, the Guard has determined, out of an abundance of caution, to inform current and past Guard personnel that their Personally Identifiable Information (PII) was among the files that were transferred.”

“The issue was identified and promptly reported, and we do not believe the data will be used unlawfully,” Brown said.

That doesn’t sound very comforting.