Data sharing needs to begin before first response, officials say

For the National Guard Bureau, the ability to share data for disaster planning and first response has been hampered by a constant stream of hacker intrusions on its unclassified networks over the past two years. “We’re getting hacked all over the place. I actually see it getting worse, and it’s making it harder and harder for us to share information,” said Maureen Lischke, CIO for the National Guard Bureau. She and other government officials spoke about data sharing to support homeland security at an Industry Advisory Council event in Washington. “It really, really has become a huge challenge,” she said. The current way the Guard handles the attacks is to go from PC to PC installing patches. But this has been difficult to manage in an organization roughly the size of Texas, she added. Lischke said her agency needs industry’s help in plugging holes and ridding the bureau of “touch labor.” Full Story