Source: National Cyber Security – Produced By Gregory Evans
Spear phishing, botnet armies, cyberdisruptors — that’s just a sampling of the attacks creating constant worry for Christopher Buse, Minnesota’s chief information security officer. Countless times a day, hackers try to find and exploit gaps in Minnesota’s vast state government computer network, hoping to steal sensitive information or gum up operations. The system also encounters state employees wading into data pools where they probably do not belong. There’s a lot of data behind state firewalls and a lot of it — tax returns, health records and licensing databases — is sensitive “Every day computer hackers find new vulnerabilities in software,” said Buse. “The onus is on us as security professionals to proactively find and fix those issues before they could potentially be exploited.” Minnesota, he believes, needs to step up its defenses. That means more-advanced intrusion detection software, continuous scanning for anomalies and better training of state employees. Gov. Mark Dayton is seeking more than $45 million from the Legislature this session to help state agencies shore up cyber defenses, including $20 million for general cybersecurity upgrades and $25 million more toward extra safeguards at agencies with an acute need. Under Minnesota’s current budget, about $435,000 is set aside next […]
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