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Washington, D.C.—The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) must increase protections for federal employees, retirees and their families after revealing that the recent cyberattacks compromised many more fingerprint records than the previous tally of 1.1 million, the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said today.

“This is further evidence that OPM’s proposal to offer credit monitoring and identity theft protections for up to three years is totally inadequate,” NTEU National President Tony Reardon said. “In light of today’s news, I once again urge the administration to provide lifetime coverage.”

NTEU strongly supports the RECOVER Act, introduced by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), which would provide lifetime credit monitoring and ID theft protection. The union continues to pursue its July 8 lawsuit against the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which seeks lifetime credit monitoring and ID theft protection for NTEU members.

Until today, OPM had said that 1.1 million of the 21.5 million people whose background records were stolen also had their fingerprint data compromised by the cyberattacks disclosed in June.

Today, OPM said the number of individuals whose fingerprint data was stolen was actually 5.6 million.

NTEU, the nation’s largest independent federal-employee union, represents 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.