Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary Jim Nicholson on Thursday stood in front of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, and explained that taxpayers may end up having to cough up $500 million as a result of the May 3 theft of personal data on 26.5 million U.S. veterans, Reuters reports.“As a veteran myself … I am mad as hell,” Nicholson said, according to Reuters.The sensitive data was stolen from the suburban Maryland residence of a department data analyst who did not have the proper approval to bring the information home. That employee has been placed on administrative leave. Nicholson told the committee that “other people are also in my sights as a result of this,” according to Reuters.Though the secretary did not say the government would cover all potential costs to veterans, Nicholson did recommend that Congress pass a measure that would entail such coverage over future incidents, Reuters reports. Nicholson said he thought it would cost “way north of $100 million” to help prevent and make up for potential losses to veterans, but he also did not shoot down the suggestion that recovery efforts could cost taxpayers five times more than that, according to Reuters.Nicholson initially told the committee that the stolen information “did not include any of the VA’s electronic health records,” but after further questioning by Rep. Bob Filner (D-California), the Bush cabinet secretary admitted the data did include codes representing veterans’ specific physical ailments, Reuters reports. The stolen data contains information on every U.S. veteran who served or was discharged since 1976.More than 100,000 frustrated and anxious veterans have already phoned in to the VA support call center since the theft was reported on Monday, according to Reuters.For related news coverage, read Data on 26.5M Veterans Stolen From VA Staffer’s Home, Gov’t Source: Vet Data Theft Kept Quiet for Nearly 3 Weeks and VA Chief Promises Accountability for ID Theft.Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage. Related content opinion Website spoofing: risks, threats, and mitigation strategies for CIOs In this article, we take a look at how CIOs can tackle website spoofing attacks and the best ways to prevent them. By Yash Mehta Dec 01, 2023 5 mins CIO Cyberattacks Security brandpost Sponsored by Catchpoint Systems Inc. Gain full visibility across the Internet Stack with IPM (Internet Performance Monitoring) Today’s IT systems have more points of failure than ever before. Internet Performance Monitoring provides visibility over external networks and services to mitigate outages. By Neal Weinberg Dec 01, 2023 3 mins IT Operations brandpost Sponsored by Zscaler How customers can save money during periods of economic uncertainty Now is the time to overcome the challenges of perimeter-based architectures and reduce costs with zero trust. By Zscaler Dec 01, 2023 4 mins Security feature LexisNexis rises to the generative AI challenge With generative AI, the legal information services giant faces its most formidable disruptor yet. That’s why CTO Jeff Reihl is embracing and enhancing the technology swiftly to keep in front of the competition. By Paula Rooney Dec 01, 2023 6 mins Generative AI Digital Transformation Cloud Computing Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe