Cash-Strapped States Burdened By Expensive Data Security Breaches

CowboyRobot writes "As budgets are pinched by reduced tax collection, many U.S. states are facing a possibility of not being able to handle the ever-increasing number of data breaches. 70% of state chief information security officers (CISOs) reported a data breach this year, each of which can cost up to $5M in some states. 'Cybersecurity accounts for about 1 to 2 percent of the overall IT budget in state agencies. ... 82 percent of the state CISOs point to phishing and pharming as the top threats to their agencies, a threat they say will continue in 2013, followed by social engineering, increasingly sophisticated malware threats, and mobile devices.' The full 2012 Deloitte-National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) Cybersecurity Study is available online (PDF)."

Comments

Parks

[Osgeld]

I live in a town of ~30,000 ... we have 2 new (pretty large) parks that were made before the shit started hitting financially ...

what if ... instead of pissing money away on bread and circuses, they fixed some (any) issues?

hell no! build a park, put brick roads in, traffic cameras! screw the guy standing at the DMV cause the windows XP sp0 running the whole fucking thing is sending out 1,000 spam messages a second while skimming everything you would need for identity theft for the entire county.

I honestly think it would be better if we banned government from having computers, none of their employees know how to use the damn things, they are always broken, and its no fucking faster than when they were on paper.

The bills eventually come due

[stox]

Things weren't any better when the states were flush with cash. Contracts are granted more on the ability to navigate the bidding process than they are by the ability of the bidder(s) to get the job done. Until that changes, we deserve what we get.

Re:The bills eventually come due

[Bacon Bits]

Contracts are always granted to the lowest bidder. Think about what that means. You will always be hiring the guy who is cutting the most corners, hiring the fewest, least skilled workers, purchasing the lowest quality or oldest tools and materials, etc. The only time you don't go with the lowest bid is when you can show that there's something wrong with the bid itself (i.e., it missed one of the requirements).

Example: There was a contract for copier service and repair at one of the K-12 schools we supported. The contract bid was half that of the other bids. Indeed, it was half the cost of the previous contracts to support the same number of copiers. Even though this makes no sense, they got the contract. New copiers were leased and installed and users were trained. 8 months through the first year, the business ran out of money. They stopped responding to calls. Then we discovered that their techs had left for another service company because their paychecks bounced. The business filed for bankruptcy. The school had to hire another service company to support the next 6 months at higher expense while a new contract was bid. The new contract was more reasonable, but the copiers were a different make. So, new copiers were leased and installed and users were trained all over again. This is how government waste happens.

By the way, if you don't go with the lowest bid the citizens will inevitably complain to the city council or representative. They will do this anyways because Americans always complain, but when there's something a council member or rep can pin on you, well it's something you want to be able to justify. "I know these guys are shady" just isn't going to cut it in all cases.

Re:The bills eventually come due

[DarkOx]

Contracts should go to the lowest bidder who can do the work. Specs should be written completely and independently before jobs are put out to bid. The real problem is that requirements are being written by people with a specific vendor in mind.

The situation you cite sounds like fraud to me. Maybe not but I would say the proprietors should be dragged into court and the state ought try and prove they never intended to be a going concern and always planed to take the money and not provide the services and If they can put'em the slam. At least it would remove the bad actors from our society and discourage others from trying to run such scams

Also the fuckwhit state employees who decided to pay some fly by night for a years services in advance should be fired for miss handling the publics funds. One of the requirements should have been to pay month to month. That way when the company folded up they would have been out at most 30 days cost in the case of a legitimate bankruptcy.

Useless "report"

[dgharmon]

"As budgets are pinched by reduced tax collection, many U.S. states are facing a possibility of not being able to handle the ever-increasing number of data breaches."

Use a computer that don't get viruses merely by, browsing the web or opening an email attachment ...