{"id":153573,"date":"2018-09-19T08:18:55","date_gmt":"2018-09-19T13:18:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=153573"},"modified":"2018-09-19T08:19:20","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T13:19:20","slug":"robinson-funding-needed-additional-cybersecurity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=153573","title":{"rendered":"Robinson: Funding needed, additional cybersecurity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-10256\" src=\"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Robinson07.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"129\" height=\"175\" \/>BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) \u2014 North Dakota information technology officials want to more than quadruple the number of cybersecurity experts to guard against a growing number of threats to state data systems.<\/p>\n<p>North Dakota Information Technology Department Chief Information Officer Shawn Riley told a bipartisan panel of lawmakers Tuesday that his agency will ask for more than $11 million in software upgrades and 37 additional cybersecurity experts in the next two-year budget.<\/p>\n<p>The state employs only 11 cybersecurity experts now, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Riley said North Dakota data systems defended against 34 million attacks over a recent six-month period and the threat is increasing.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have a huge challenge in front of us,&#8221; Riley said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Democratic Sen. Larry Robinson<\/strong>, of Valley City, said the Legislature should fund the agency&#8217;s request when lawmakers reconvene in January.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think we need to step up to the plate here,&#8221; Robinson told the Information Technology Committee. &#8220;It&#8217;s wrong if we ignore it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In addition to leading the state&#8217;s cybersecurity efforts, the agency supports the information technology needs of state government, K-12 education and higher education.<\/p>\n<p>It has 344 employees and a two-year budget $245 million, though it intends to slash $77 million and 17 employees as part of a directive to all state agencies from Republican Gov. Doug Burgum to cut budgets and staffing in the next two-year budget cycle.<\/p>\n<p>Riley estimated the cost of additional cybersecurity experts would be about $12 million in salary and benefits annually.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) \u2014 North Dakota information technology officials want to more than quadruple the number of cybersecurity experts to guard against a growing number of threats to state data systems. North Dakota Information Technology Department Chief Information Officer Shawn Riley told a bipartisan panel of lawmakers Tuesday that his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11230,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=153573"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":153575,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153573\/revisions\/153575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=153573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=153573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=153573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}