water supplies, monitoring natural disasters. back then, he says, cybersecurity was so new, it was almost a nonissue during the shutdown. the government shutdown that you'd experienced back in 1995, for one to happen today, it would be a completely different ball game? >> there is no comparison. the number of people that would be determined essential this time, just for the security piece alone will be several orders of magnitude larger. >> reporter: federal agencies are required to have backup plans listing essential employees, people who stay behind and safeguard their agency when everyone else goes home. where do you see the biggest threat being when it comes to the security of the cyberinfrastructure? >> we need to have people who can read the output from the monitoring systems that come in, and if there's targeted attacks which we get every single day, then you have to be able to respond to those. >> reporter: karen evans was in charge of information technology under president george w. bush. she says, policy guidelines have not adequately changed since