With only two months left before government agencies must figure out <A HREF="http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6197474.html?tag=nl.rSINGLE">how to deal with data breaches and data theft,</A> federal bureaucrats are scrambling to meet the looming deadline.

The deadline was created by a White House directive published this spring that gave all federal agencies until September 22 to figure out the wisest way, using their "best judgment," to come up with a plan to secure Americans' personal data and to alert them if it falls into the wrong hands.

Finishing everything by that date is "definitely a challenge," Mischel Kwon, chief IT security technologist for the U.S. Department of Justice, said Wednesday.