That say you see these types ofb tragedies and then i walkedis across the bridge and this gentleman came and got me and said come on joe i want you to come over and see that i walked across the bridge for another nidal large stream comes out of the mountains but it become a raging river and they basically joined. D, sometimes the hydrology will back up and create the dam or the water creates the dam itseld i walk in there and it looked like a bomb had gone off and there were three or four homes completely burning and it exploded. Nd he had been one of them and he said when this all hit and the water he ran as quick as he could with his wife and they headed up to the hillside that they thought everybody had gotten out at a lady to get out and she came back into the home. When the house shifted it broke the gas line in the gas line is broken and it filled up the homes with natural gas that when the house is shifted the power lines broke loose and the sparks and the powerline hit the gas and blew up the homes like explosions going off. The woman was in the house. She got caught and she couldnt get back out and she went in to get something. G she went into the attic and she got burned over 70 of her body and then shoot jumped into a tree and hung in a tree for three or four hours until they rescued her. I understand she passed away yesterday. We have lost 23 confirmed dead. We thought there were 25 because two people got swept away and they were reported missing. They found them alive so we are 23 but we have five, six or seven unaccounted for it. The tragedy continues and people are out pouring their love and i want to thank first of all fema. Fema is on the job doing unbelievable. The National Guard that theng corps of engineers. Its going to take everything we have to put our state back together. People have infrastructure and maybe we can change some streams to the point to where they will move differently and water will flow differently hopefully but this is where you need your federal government and state. Your beautiful state couldnt do it right it felt than we could do buyers open i want if thanks the my first responders. We have red cross and we have everybody in. People want to know how they cae help. People say i dont have any money but i want to come to your state. We need volunteers to want to work that we need people who have resources to want to help with their times their money and donations. If they want to send goods we need that. We need everything. People have lost everything. To give an example jim just as the owner of the greenbrier resort, the greenbrier is closed tournament was planned at its been canceled and the golf course is rented a certain extent but they will come back. Jim basically has opened up the greenbrier to anybody thats homeless right now or lost their home. Soon we will get a place to stay free. Come to the greenbrier. Leon have hot water but we have water so that is what he is doing and its been so gracious to do that. I would tell people that they can get on my web site manchin senate. Gov at the front of our web site you will be able to see anything you want to do and itt will take you right to a site that you can get in contact with the people to help our state. N h again, i know the love and times and compassion the times that people have and ive watchede people come together. It our little state always took care of itself and when you ask people if you have a place to stay they will say im staying with my neighbor. The outpouring of love and compassion around the country is just unbelievable. We have a lot of things west virginias brad paisley called and he wants to do a benefit fod the state and thats going to ba tremendous and so many people. So many people have stepped up to the plate. From the bottom of my heart or want are want to say thank you to everybody for reaching out. I just called home and its raining again and now we havee flash flood warnings after the same areas again that i talk to the weather channel. We are not supposed to get anywhere near it so we will be able to handle this we hope is that it recently starts stops the cleanup and the devastating to see whats happening. So i say thank you to all of my colleagues, everyone who has sent their sincere and heartfelt sincere condolences for our state, the people who lost their lives thats the first and foremost. We can replace Everything Else but we cant replace those dear little kids and their parents and grandparents and we have just unbelievable so with that adam president i say thank you from the great state of west behalf colleague senator capito and i thank you very much. We both been on the trail working together to try to get the relief that we can and just keep us in your prayers. Host congressmans will hurd a republican from texas is the chairman of the subcommittee on Information Technology. Hes our guest this week on the communicators. Congressman hurd before you came a member of congress what were you doing it . Guest when i graduated from texas a m university with a degree in Computer Science i went straight into the cia. I was an Operations Officer so i was the dude in the back alleys of 4 00 in the morning collecting intelligence on threats to our homeland. I spent two years in washington d. C. Training and india in two years in pakistan, two years in new york city in the year and a half in afghanistan where he managed all the undercover operations. When i left the cia i became a partner and a firm that helped start the Cybersecurity Company doing helping businesses and manufacturers defend their researcher from attackers. Host how is that benefited are affected your work in congress . Guest its been really important. One of the values that bring is a unique background and experience on issues of National Security or Cyber Security and having spent a good deal of my adult life chasing terrorists, dealing with al qaeda, looking at Iranian Nuclear row with raters this has helped. I have direct experience in some of the most pressing National Security efforts today and having been in the private sector and seeing what the private sector is doing in order to defend their Digital Infrastructure, some of our banks, their abilities to protect themselves from millions of attacks is important. So being able to see that and bring that experience as the chairman of the subcommittee has been a valuable. I understand what it takes to defend the digital network, the difficulty of it but also the basic as practices of good digital hygiene are so being able to recognize the current state that many of our agencies are in and what the future states should he and having an idea of how to compare a think is very important. Its especially important the oversight role that congress place. Host the u. S. Government is spending approximately 80 billion here in Tech Knowledge he had cybersecurity. Are we getting our moneys worth in your view . Guest no because 80 of that is on stuff at your viewers would seem are old and outdated. To me thats absolutely outrageous and part of that, you know this is an issue thats no longer timehonored. I teach procurement is not a topic but the reality is the way we can reduce the size in the scope of the federal government is how we purchase goods and services but the way we make our government more efficient is to utilize the latest technology. We have to make sure that the folks defending our networks are using the latest techniques and the latest tools. Id use the Social Security administration is a perfect example. This is an agency that has information on every single american and they have a lot of information on our seniors and we need to make sure that information is being protected. The department of education is another example. It has so much information on their students all across the country and that information can be used in order to create fraud and longterm problems for our kids. Host joining our conversation today congressman hurd is tim starks to cover cybersecurity for politico. Guest hello congressman. Guest good afternoon. Guest there is a law which you are familiar with that is intended to improve some of the problems you are talking about. Can you explain the importance of that law and in particular how would apply to security and how do you think agencies are implementing it so far . Guest this law was passed a number of years ago and it was ultimately designed to empower the chief Information Officer within these various agencies. The reality was that you know theoretically the cio was the post to be the one with the responsibility to implement i. T. Projects, direct and spend but that wasnt happening. It was designed to strengthen the cia the cios role and also to make sure they are doing things like Agile Development that when you have these big expensive projects that you are realizing victories in wins and deliverables over a six month period rather than spending half a trillion dollars over four years introducing nothing what actually happened when dod and the va tried to improve interoperability within their Electronic Health records so fitara, the scores are based on information that the agencies are providing to us so this is their own information. They know exactly how the score is arranged and the reality is we only have one out of 24 agencies, we have one agency get a b in one agency got an f and everybody else was in between. What has been good is that this has focus the conversation on things like data consolidation. The federal government has almost 11,000 data systems. Facebook, one that the Biggest Companies in the world has for. There is no reason that the federal government should have 11,000 and you can rely savings. Through this fitara scorecard we have realized that four agencies have consumed 4 billion of data by moving into the clouds so with the scores were trying to shine a light on some of the key elements that we can improve the efficiencies and the security of the federal government infrastructure. Host before you go any further fitara is an acronym for federal Information Technology acquisition reform act and cio is an acronym for chief Information Officer. Tim starks. Guest the scores you talk about if i recall correctly the last scorecard shows a number of agencies moving up that you think they are moving up fast enough and showing the progress you would like to see . I believe six agencies are the ones that moved up and thats a good trend. The reality is the environment in which these chief Information Officer cios are operating are pretty large. I dont think we can get to improve security fast enough. There is no Silver Bullet when it comes to protecting Digital Infrastructure. The reality is you have to begin with the presumption of reach. You give an attacker enough time they are going to get in and the question is can you detect them can you quarantine them and can you kick them out of the network and how fast can you do each one of those steps clicked the problem has been years of mismanagement, not investing in Current Technologies and this is an important reason that we have this fitara scores to continue to shine a light on this, continue to treasure on these agencies to make sure they do the right things to protect their Digital Infrastructure so we dont have Something Like the opm hacks were 23 million records of folks have gone through a security background was breached. So this is important and we are not living fast enough that we also need to make sure these agencies have the flexibility and they realize the savings that they are able to use that savings on other issues throughout the networks. Guest speaking of the president has his own proposal to address some of these issues. The i. T. Modernization which is 3 million in seed money investing in improving that eventually will bring williams of dollars in savings. The proposal does not seem to have any money and the spending bills that are moving right now, im wondering if you think that is a good idea and in particular if so do you think of something that might be happening before the president leaves office . Guest the concept is a valuable concept. We need to make sure that our agencies are modernized but heres the reality. You dont just modernize and 201630 have to constantly stay uptodate on the latest trend at the latest hacking techniques and procedures and developing networks. I think the reality is its hard when your art is spending 80 billion a year on your i. T. Business services and when 80 of that is its hard to justify another 3 billion. Why not use that 80 billion were successfully and again i think this is where when you do certain things to rely savings and i talked earlier about how just four agencies moving into the cloud is that 2 billion, that savings is realized over the next four years at about 8 billion. Imagine if the agencies had access to those funds how much they can do for modernization within their network. We have to make this into their operations. The cios when theyre planning their budgets they have to be thinking about longterm and how can they move age systems into the future . How can they get rid of old systems . We had a bipartisan bicameral letter that asked for hardware and software that was no longer supported by vendors. The information that we got back , there are programs providing support back in 1993 and four folks within the government that means they can continue to patch the software and understandable abilities. Its unrealistic so moving forward on modernization is absolutely important that this is something that should be a daytoday thing for our cios ncis so chief security Information Officers. Guest the yacht white house would tell you that is just not money they are proposing for this fund. They are oversight mechanisms along with what you are talking about. Do you think those could help . Guest if you get the cio the flexibility that they realize the savings that they are able to use that over multiple calendar years i think thats a good tool for them to have access to because the reality is when you talk about some of these big projects within the federal government the problem the federal government has his many of these projects you are talking about are huge and that takes a different mindset, different tactic and to try to rely savings in one calendar year and to use that in that same calendar year is really hard to do. So making sure that the cios across the agency have that capability and freedom of flexibility is important. I think part of the plan is to have a csi l. For the federal government. I think thats a positive step. The current cio tony scott, think he has a great background and great experience in the private sector and knows what its like to defend networks from bad guys and hes been able to leverage a lot of that experience into the federal government great having someone that to focus specifically on security is a good idea. Host congressman hurd csio stands for . Guest the chief security Information Officer. Host you also mentioned the chief Information Officer for the u. S. He has said the Current Situation with Government Cybersecurity is a bigger problem than y2k. Do you agree . Guest absolutely this and heres the reality, the number of attackers coming after us are only increasing and the level of sophistication is increasing. As we move to a more digital environment and an interconnect world that increases the area of attack and the folks that have the capabilities to get into our system is large. So this is a difficult job and the reality is we can also be learning from our private sector colleagues and information sharing. Congress passed the cybersecurity act of 2015. It was a very important piece of legislation that is going to make sure we have the tools and the h. S. In order to improve information sharing between the federal government and the private sector. You have information sharing organizations that usually are within a particular industry like the Financial Services industry that share permission amongst themselves that if we improve the kind of court nation from the private sector and the federal government, its great. We know right now that there are some Russian Hackers in moscow that are coding the net level of malware benefiting and using it to penetrate our digital and the structure and our banks here. Our Financial Services industry know where those attacks may come from. If we were able to use National Intelligence resources to try to better understand that and get that information to the private sector in order to help them defend one leg up on the attackers this is one way that they can take our defensive game to the next level. Guest congressman another one of things they want to do to respond to the threats you are talking about is a change to what has become known as rule 41 which changes how the government would get warrants to go after. Net or those types of threats. Im wondering what you think of those field tests recently that congress has until december 1 to block it if it so chooses. Where do you fall on that being a threat to privacy versus unnecessary threats . Guest heres the reality. We can protect their Digital Infrastructure and our Civil Liberties at the same time. Our Civil Liberties are not urgent. They are the things that make our country great and we should go to every single length we can to protect them. We can make sure we are still taking the fight to those that are trying to attack us. The devil his eyes and the details on how you do this. A lot of these attacks are coming from offshore in countries that dont have rules against this kind of behavior. T