Dive Brief:

• The U.S. Census Bureau is the latest federal agency to announce that one of its databases had been breached. However, the agency said the breach didn't expose data collected on businesses and households. 

• The exposed information included names, addresses, phone numbers, user names and other data of employees.

• The cyberattack was allegedly in protest of two pending trade agreements — the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.

Dive Insight:

The leak came from a database belonging to the Federal Audit Clearinghouse. John H. Thompson, the Census Bureau’s director, said the attackers gained access to a database on an external IT system that is separated from an internal system that stores census data.

“Over the last three days, we have seen no indication that there was any access to internal systems,” Thompson wrote.

Federal agencies have sustained several cyberattacks in recent months — including the massive OPM breach last month — which points to a concerning trend that the federal government is having difficulty securing its networks and protecting its data.