Government : In The State House

Hello Friends and Neighbors,

The week flew by. We were off for Martin Luther King Day and then tried to cram 5 days of work into 3. That obviously didn’t work very well for me, because I’m in my office at the Capitol now. And that’s great because it is quiet here today and there was no need for a dress!

In Commerce Committee, Shazam gave a presentation on cybersecurity and credit card fraud. Although I thought you all might be interested in the statistics, information on how to protect yourself is important.

* Banks and credit unions were targeted by ¼ of all phishing attacks in December 2014

* Nearly 439 million records were stolen from April to October of 2014. 519 million records total in 2014. - FBI

* About 110 million Americans, 50% of U.S. adults, had their personal data exposed in some form in 2014.

* 85% of breaches happen as a result of phishing. Don’t give your personal data over the phone or email. Don’t open attachments or click links in financial institution/paypal/airline etc. emails unless you’re expecting to receive something.

* There were 222 reported data breaches in 2015, with more than 159 million records stolen. Retail, healthcare, education and financial institutions were all targeted.

The industry advances like the EMV data chip in your credit cards or tokenization have limitations. According to our presenters, the best protection you have is your PIN number and it is under your control. For some reason I thought using my debit card as a credit card was safer, but according to Shazam, the signature verification system is not as safe as your PIN. I may start looking at how I use my cards a little differently.

Next week, we are going to act right away to set education funding with a raise of $81 million to the per pupil amount. If you recall from last week, we are estimated to receive $153 million more dollars for July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017. Between the $50 million for Teacher Leadership already promised and this $81 million increase on Per Pupil Spending, we are committing 84% of the new dollars to educating young Iowans. Carving out education ahead of the normal budget process shows our priority to education, but leaves a challenge in finding additional dollars for public safety, mental health, water quality and so much more later in the session. Good or bad, that’s how we do it. One, it does show education is our priority and two, it allows our school board members to finish their budget process up in a timely way.

Senator Kapucian and I have scheduled our legislative listening posts for the year. The first one will be at the Shellsburg American Legion on February 6 at 1:30. Hope you can make it! If you have any questions or concerns, you can email me at dawn.pettengill@legis.iowa.gov or call 515-281-6879. I would love to hear from you.

Your friend,

Dawn

p.s. I have not seen hide nor hair of the mouse in my car this week. Maybe he’s gone?