The government is moving closer to issuing a contract to provide identity restoration and other services to federal employees and others affected by the cyber breach of security clearance files. It’s now expected to be issued around the end of next week, although it likely will be several weeks after that until notifications start to go out to affected persons. Those notices will tell them which of their information was compromised and how they can go about getting the free credit monitoring and other identity protection services to be offered. For the current and former federal employees affected, that will be largely a repeat of the notices and benefits they were offered due to a separate breach of personnel files, only with some additional services and three years of benefits rather than 18 months. They also likely will be among the first notified, since the government already has contact information on them readily at hand; in contrast, it could take months to track down many of the contractor employees also affected by the clearance files breach. Meanwhile, several senators have said they will offer an amendment to a cybersecurity bill set for consideration when Congress returns to provide lifetime credit monitoring services, identity theft protection and restoration, and $5 million in liability protection for related damages for those affected by either of the data breaches. It would expand on language recently accepted by a Senate committee to provide 10 years of such services plus that amount of liability protection. Current plans by the administration are to provide 18 months for the personnel files breach and three years for the clearance files breach.