The FDIC followed the mandates in the Federal Information Security Management Act and reported the incident to Congress right away. Since February, the FDIC updated its policy to prohibit removable storage device usage.

Despite the FDIC's efforts to mitigate the risks in the aftermath of the breach, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology opened an investigation into the agency's history of information security. Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) asked Gruenberg for details about the breach and all major security breaches involving FDIC information since 2009.

“As you know, sensitive information that is housed for any length of time without proper measures in place to mitigate cybersecurity risks is susceptible to a breach,” Smith wrote. “Even more troubling, the potential for a breach is especially heightened when sensitive information for over 44,000 individuals is stored without proper security measures.”

“The FDIC was lucky that the employee cooperated and returned the data. Not every company or government agency will fare so well,” Gord Boyce, CEO of San Jose, Calif.-based file security firm FinalCode, said.

Boyce added, with all of the layers of security available, organizations have no excuse when it comes to preventing data leakage of customer information or intellectual property.

“Securing sensitive information at the file level is the best way to define individual access permission and ensures that you can maintain control over your data everywhere it travels, inside or outside the organization,” he said.

The FDIC breach serves as a cautionary tale of the susceptibility of sensitive information no matter the intentions.

“Once unencrypted data is out there, it's out there. Organizations should foresee this occurring and apply file security and policies beforehand,” Boyce maintained.