A presentation by the head of the state's Virginia Information Technologies Agency puts into perspective how careful people should be with their electronic data. While there are institutions in place such as VITA to help safeguard against hackers and identity thieves, extra vigilance by ALL consumers is warranted.
CIO Sam Nixon tells the General Assembly's Joint Commission on Technology and Science that his agency’s number one priority is I-T security, but hackers literally from all over the world are constantly looking for vulnerabilities in their system.
The network houses Social Security, payroll, and medical histories. Nixon says it must continually evolve as cyber-attackers become more sophisticated. He adds that a new technology exits that utilizes a form of artificial intelligence that is able to detect the types of attacks utilized by NSAleaker Eric Snowden. Nixon says he believes Virginia is the only state that's considering using that technology, which is still in its early stages.