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Cyber Attacks Affecting Nation's Government

Americans might think they are safe, but if they only knew that their own government can't even keep themselves safe from cyber attacks. The truth is that nothing and no one is safe anymore. An attack can come physically, mentally and now from cyber space. Now that the Internet has redefined our lives and businesses, break-ins are virtual and the new currency is information - personally identifying information, to be exact.

As we dive deeper into the Age of Information, anything goes with the Internet as hackers try to steal your most valuable information; your identity and other personal information like bank accounts and social security number.

No one can hide from cyber attacks since everyone and everything uses the Internet and computers for work, play and more. Right now, our own government is at risk, as Virginia's administration is now learning. Hackers claim to have broken into a state-run prescription drug database - run by the Prescription Monitoring Program - last month and stolen or deleted 8 million patient records and 35 million prescription records. They demanded a $10 million ransom for the safe return of the compromised data, or threatened to sell it to the highest bidder.

As the debate continues over whether this is the biggest cybercrime attack in history, the reality is frightening: There are no safe havens anymore, and not even governments - who we entrust with our most private information - are immune. We now have absolutely no control over the myriad third parties that touch our data after we relinquish control.

While the state investigates whether an actual breach occurred, officials have confirmed that all of the compromised data is safely stored on backups and the systems themselves have been secured from further attacks. This unresolved outage is costing the state and its citizens dearly, and calls into question plans to overhaul the entire health care system with adequate doses of technology and process. All medical history will now be online, exposing regular citizens to anyone who is very knowledgeable about computers.

As health records go digital, can governments at all levels assure us what's happening in Virginia won't also happen to electronic health records (EHRs) around the world? Although public-sector agencies almost always claim to be using the latest security tools and processes, they can't guarantee our government-run health care infrastructure will be inviolable, which is why there needs to be more certified security professionals working to stop cyber attacks. They need to have the right training and take all the IT certification exams possible to make sure they know enough to secure every aspect of confidential and private records from being hacked into.

But as governments hurriedly plan and deploy platforms, systems and processes to automate the business of managing bureaucracy and accelerating service delivery, the risk of cybercrime only grows. Massive new public data repositories represent irresistible targets of opportunity for identity thieves. It's fair to question whether governments at any level possess sufficient technical and process maturity to keep our data safe from cybercriminals. They need to have trained professionals stay up to date with all forms of security and always take training courses to improve and enhance their skills so that cybercriminals are stopped.

As citizens, we can't lock the doors any more, but we can certainly demand our government to provide the best possible security infrastructure in place before they collect our data and aggregate it in centralized repositories highly prized by cybercriminals or else we're all screwed. This is probably why the demand for computer security professionals is growing right now. You can easily take a certification bootcamp training classes to become a certified computer security professional and jump into a rising section within the IT industry.

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