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Kentucky House to Vote on Cyber Security Improvements for State Government

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A bill improving cyber security for Kentucky state government will get a vote in the House.

Consider the Black Friday security breach that compromised credit card information for over a hundred million Target customers, Should hackers ever comprise computers in a Kentucky state government agency, House Bill 5 would require the state to tell you what happened.

State Auditor Adam Edelen testified before a House committee in support of the bill. He says the bill is necessary since the state holds so much personal data.

“The government has collected your bank account number; we certainly know your Social Security numbers; blood type, in many cases; and it goes on and on," Edelen says. "Certainly with government at every level being a major collector of personal data we’ve got to make sure that that personal data is protected.”

He says it’s the state’s duty to protect citizens’ data.

“This bill is an idea whose time has come," he says. "Every citizen of Kentucky is impacted in the digital by the collection of their personal data. And if you ask me in a sentence what this bill is about, this bill is about a government that collects your information has an obligation to inform you if they lose it.”

But Edelen says that the bill would not cover data held by the legislative or judicial branches, which he says should be addressed by future legislation.

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