Most notable government reform I have seen

It has long been theorized that the wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea but instead will be through computerized device. That future has arrived. Each and every day our nation and its IT assets are under assault from foreign nation states.

If you’ve listened to the news lately, you have probably heard the discouraging results from the front lines of our nation’s latest war.

The recently reported compromise of the federal government’s unencrypted personnel records provides the latest example of a damaging and successful attack with far-reaching and long-term consequences.

The federal government isn’t the only public entity on the front lines of the cyberwar. Hostile nation states also view state governments as targets for attack.

Using the internet, the attackers seek to comprise your government-held data from the comfort of their home country where they are beyond the reach of our law enforcement.

Several years ago, I visited the cubicle of the brave person assigned to provide state government with centralized intrusion detection services. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The state’s network and security monitoring situations were absolutely untenable, segmented by agency and held back by a limited capacity to record intrusion attempts. Finding an intrusion was much like searching for a needle in a haystack. Worse, the intrusion might have been detected, but only after it had already occurred.

At the same time, the failure of the state’s IT security situation came into full public view when the Department of Human Services lost approximately one million data files. Just like the federal government’s data breach, the DHS data was in an unencrypted state.

The DHS loss, coupled with several smaller data losses, demonstrated the urgent need for reform.

To the credit of Oklahoma’s policy makers, they took action. They advanced the proposal to consolidate the state’s IT assets for two primary reasons: A report showed the potential for millions in yearly savings to the taxpayer, and lawmakers realized the need for the overhaul of IT security protocol.

The ensuing transformation of the security situation has been the single most remarkable state government project that I have witnessed in my time of office. State government projects usually move at a snail’s pace. It can take years for a project to progress from concept to implementation; conversely, the state’s new security operations center concept took just weeks to implement. The state’s security team now monitors IT activity in real time from a state-of-the art environment. They utilize monitoring and detection tools which are tied together with innovative reporting software developed in-house by state security personnel.

Almost overnight, Oklahoma’s IT security situation transitioned from antiquated into one at the forefront of the nation’s state-level IT security presences. Our IT employees are on the front lines of the cyberwar and their new security position allows them to guard state assets and to provide vital intelligence to their national counterparts.

The state is also well positioned to protect Oklahoma’s local government entities which are responsible for vital infrastructure assets but do not always have access to modern security technologies.

Because of the sensitive nature of their work, security officials don’t often speak publicly about their successes in the cyber war; however, you should know that your government-held information and taxpayer-funded technology assets are now many times better protected against hostile foreign attacks which come against state government systems every day. While an abundance of caution is still in order, the era of repeated losses of taxpayer data seems to have come to an end.

Next week I will describe the latest IT effort to increase the effectiveness of other areas of the IT program (while still realizing millions of annual savings for the taxpayers) by using the security operations success story as their roadmap.

Thank you for reading this article. Your interest and input are much appreciated. Please do not hesitate to email Jason.Murphey@hd31.org with your thoughts and suggestions.