On the 17th of July Harold Martin will face 9 years of imprisonment following a long and complicated investigation regarding retention of national defense information.

Martin has been working in national security for more than 20 years and has served as a contractor of NSA from where he took details of computer infrastructure and classified operations, including 50 terabytes of government officers’ personal details, and “Top Secret” emails.

The investigation revealed that Martin could leak the data to the Shadow Brokers – the group who advertised NSA hacking tools online – after they gained a search warrant and accessed Harold’s Twitter account. Messages from his account would be sent just a few hours before the group posted them for sale.

While Martin was in custody the Shadow Brokers seemed to receive information from other sources, i.e. other contractors.

Although, the disclosure of the Shadow Brokers is not as relevant as security flaws which jeopardised the U.S. reputation.

The NSA is willing to enhance employee monitoring techniques, add policies to refine the hiring process and give supervisors more instruments to control the internal activity and communications.