The Transportation Security Administration offered employees $25,000 in identity-theft insurance on Monday, after an external hard drive containing employment information on the workers went missing from an office last week.

The data includes names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and payroll information such as bank account and routing information of workers employed at the TSA from January 2002 until August 2005. In a letter to federal employees, TSA Administrator Kip Hawley apologized for the loss of the hard drive but stressed that the fate of the storage device is still currently unknown.

"During the weekend, extensive interviews were conducted as part of the continuing investigation for the missing hard drive," the TSA said in statement. "The U.S. Secret Service has been actively working with TSA since Friday morning, including gathering forensic evidence."

The hard drive is the latest missing storage device to caused potential privacy headaches for a U.S. government agency. A year ago, the Department of Veterans Affairs lost a laptop and external hard drive, later recovered, with sensitive information on nearly 26.5 million members of the military. The potential breach was only exceptional in its sheer size; numerous other agencies, including the Department of the Navy and the Department of Agriculture, have also lost data on storage devices or through hacks.

Overall, U.S. government agencies received a 'C-' grade this year on an annual data security report card mandated by the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), despite regulations designed to secure data storage practices.

Corporate America is also dealing with significant data breaches. Retail giant TJX Companies continues to investigate the theft of information on at least 45.6 million credit and debit cards by data thieves that entered their systems through an unsecured wireless connection. A federal report calls for more unified data security rules.

In its statement on the latest data leak, the TSA said that it has some method of detecting if someone uses the hard drive.