Science & Technology

The battle against cyber attacks is being joined in Virginia.  Political leaders are looking for new weapons to fight the wave of breaches and hack attacks that seem to be ramping up.

Until recently, having a so-called ‘fire wall’ on your computer or network was the way to keep your data safe; but, clearly, not any more.

If you think it’s windy outside, that’s nothing compared to the wind speeds inside the wind tunnel at Virginia Tech.  Built by NASA during World War Two to test aircraft stability, it remains one of the best of its kind in the world.

Towns and cities in Virginia are perpetually short of cash, but a Charlottesville man says there’s an easy fix.  If they could get one state commission to share a single computer file, they could collect at least $200 million.  

Waldo Jaquith heads U.S. Open Data - a non-profit set up to help people in government understand how to use all the information they gather to better serve the public.  Lately he’s been looking at the State Corporation Commission. 

There’s a Hackathon set for this weekend at Virginia Tech. Students from around the country will be in Blacksburg. ---But no need to worry. These are not the same hackers who stage attacks on computers. 

"We need to throw out the misnomer. Hackathons are not really about getting together and hacking in to mainframes," says Computer Science major Brandon Potts, Transportation Coordinator for this weekend’s Hackathon at Virginia Tech.

Recent hacking incidents have put Cyber Security on the agenda.  The President will talk about it in his State of the Union Address next week.  So what can you do to promote cyber safety? 

Be unique.  Be secure.  Change your password.  Those and other warnings are plastered on the walls at the Information Technology Office at Virginia Tech. Experts say the biggest challenge is that things change so quickly in cyber space.  But one thing is clear, words like safety and ‘security’ now apply to the virtual world as much as, the physical world.