"Russia launched a 'sophisticated cyberattack' against the Pentagon's Joint Staff unclassified email system, which has been shut down and taken offline for nearly two weeks. According to officials, the 'sophisticated cyber intrusion' occurred sometime around July 25 and affected some 4,000 military and civilian personnel who work for the Joint Chiefs of Staff."
Security expert Richard Blech, CEO and Co-Founder of Secure Channels, says:"In this cyber war, Russia is one of the more sophisticated bad actors. The Russians clearly knew what they were looking for, which implies this was a precision attack. The hackers gathered highly sensitive data in a very short time. Considering the high level target, this is just a small piece of the bigger puzzle that should be leaving everyone alarmed. The officials are stressing (or protesting) that no classified data was seized or compromised, this data still came from the Joint Chief of Staff Office.
"If the sensitive data had been encrypted the type of data would no longer matter. It's reported that: 'almost immediately after the cyberattack was detected, the Pentagon took the aggressive step of shutting down the entire Joint Staff unclassified email system and Internet during its investigation.' That's another reactionary, after-the-fact afterthought that would not have been needed if they had encrypted data in the first place. The proliferation of these kind of attacks will escalate until the government treats protecting all forms of data as a priority."