Saturday, June 06, 2015

The OPM and other federal agencies were hacked by someone this week. At least four million records were accessed including name, birth date and place, and Social Security numbers. The Chinese are suspected by the US government. These hacks are becoming more common. Probably by 2016 the records of EVERY American will have been illegally accessed and is available for criminal or other uses.

There are three problems.  

1. Most employees in government OR the private sector (See the Target hack and others) have NO training in security. The threat of cyber attacks is recent and we are not trained to deal with these issues. 


2. The federal, state and local governments have almost NO chance of hiring cyber-security experts because these make 3X more in the private sector and there is a huge shortage of people trained in these skills.  


3. We are cutting BIG GOVERNMENT because many members of Congress think it's bad. So most agencies can't hire new people in new areas such as information protection and security.
Between international criminal organizations and foreign governments launching attacks the United States is hosed. 


We should be asking EVERY Presidential contender what they would do about this serious national issue. Cutting budgets is probably not going to protect the United States and Americans from cyber attacks. 




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