It's not just emails: State Department cybersecurity deteriorated every year under Clinton


A compilation of State Department audits finds that the agency's cybersecurity — already sub-par when Hillary Clinton took office as secretary of state in 2009 — declined each successive year Clinton remained in charge.
One audit in particular scored the department 42 out of 100 on a cybersecurity report card, a lower grade than was given to the Office of Personnel Management, which announced this past summer that it had suffered a data breach affecting some 4 million people. Clinton's released emails also suggest that the department's computer system is in bad shape: "State's technology is so antiquated that NO ONE uses a State-issued laptop," wrote one Clinton aide.
The State Department itself says that its cybersecurity is in great shape, with a system that defeats "almost 100 percent" of 4 billion digital attacks each year. Since Clinton was replaced by current Secretary of State John Kerry, audits show the agency's cybersecurity has continued to go downhill.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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