30 state agencies under Maryland State Archives vulnerable to cyber attacks

The Maryland State Archives oversees five servers that operate Internet services for more than 30 state agencies, and all five are vulnerable to cyber attacks, reports the Baltimore Sun.
From the Sun:

The Maryland State Archives, which oversees the five servers, did not update the operating systems in more than five years, auditors found. Without the protective software patches and updates, Internet service for nearly the entire state government could be at risk, Legislative Auditor Thomas J. Barnickel III said.

Read the full story at the Baltimore Sun.
Despite wrangling between privacy groups and national congressional representatives over the re-introduced Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, cyber attacks are worth some worry, as demonstrated by last week’s hacking of the Associated Press Twitter account that sent the stock market tumbling nearly 150 points.
Still, as Technically Baltimore explored in its series on CISPA, oftentimes what’s required to prevent cyber attacks isn’t further legislation or better information sharing, but simply better computer maintenance on the part of computer users everywhere.
“You have to realize that you are a target. There’s a numbers game of botnets where they want to hack as many things as possible,” said Ron Gula, CEO of Columbia-based cybersecurity firm Tenable Network Security.
He told Technically Baltimore in February that people need to “patch their software, run antivirus, have a firewall,” and refrain from assuming that “systems are patching themselves.”