Welcome to the tech policy podcast, your source for policy, rants, and raves from Tech Freedom,

your Washington, D.C. advocate for the freedom to tinker and innovate. I'm Evan Schwarzen

Schwarzenstraver, your host. On today's show, The War on Hacking, as more and more hacks affect

hundreds of millions of people and even billions

around the world, with major companies like Sony and Target getting hacked and the U.S.

government getting hacked, healthcare companies, what's being done to win the war on cyber attacks?

Is this a winnable war at all? Joining me to discuss this is Morgan Wright, a cybersecurity analyst for major national

media outlets and a senior fellow at the Center for Digital Government. He has testified

before Congress about issues of cybersecurity, and he has previously appeared on this podcast.

Morgan, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks, Evan. So if 2015 was the year of the hack,

as our friend Shane Tews at AEI said, and 2016 is going to be even bigger, what is the state of play for cyber attacks in the United States and around the world?

I'm reminded of my favorite Monty Python movie, The Holy Grill, and the famous line, run away, run away, you know.

You know, it's going to get worse.

I mean, actually, I would say it.

I'd say 2014 was the year of the hack, 2015, the mega hack, 2016, the mega-mega hack.

We are seeing increases in things on ransomware, where they encrypt your files and literally

hold it for ransom.

We're seeing increases in data breaches. Identity theft, still the number one consumer complaint for 15 years in a row at the FTC.

I'm not sure how this gets better for a while, you know?

Well, on that optimistic note, let's get into some specifics.

What's being done right now to deal with this?

This is an obvious problem, and maybe there's been a few seminal moments like the Sony hack when we really just

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