Air Force officials announced on Friday, June 10, that it has lost thousands of investigation records dating back to 2004 due to a database crash.
According to Defense One, the lost records contain over 100,000 investigation files ranging from issues like workplace disputes to fraud.
The data, which was kept in the Air Force’s Automated Case Tracking System, was under the operation of Lockheed Martin, a defense firm. After the servers crashed, Lockheed Martin spent two weeks trying to recover the lost data before contacting the Air Force on June 6.
The Air Force is now reaching out to cybersecurity experts at the Pentagon for further assistance.
“We’ve kind of exhausted everything we can to recover within [the Air Force] and now we’re going to outside experts to see if they can help,” said Ann Stefanek, an Air Force spokeswoman at the Pentagon, told Defense One.
Air Force officials believe that the incident was accidental, and not a result of malicious intent.
“[W]e’re doing our due diligence and checking out all avenues within the investigation to find out if there’s anything that we’re not aware of,” Stefanek said. “Right now, we don’t have any indication of that.”
It is still unknown what caused the data to be corrupted, though Lockheed spokeswoman Maureen Schumann told Air Force Times that they are working in conjunction with the Air Force to determine the cause and restore lost files.
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