Industry leaders moving rapidly into a data-driven economy say cybersecurity is what keeps them awake at night — with good reason, Sen. John Thune says.
Speaking Thursday at a Chamber of Commerce conference focusing on technology and its impact on the South Dakota economy, Thune said cyber threats “are front and center” with national military commanders and are only superseded by concerns over the nuclear agreement with Iran.
“There isn’t a day goes by that state actors like China, like Russia, and non-state actors, terrorists, are trying to hack into our systems in this country. … financial services, our electric grid … and trying to do great damage to America’s economy,” he said.
That makes cybersecurity increasingly important, Thune said, and why he not only intends to push that subject at a hearing on the Dakota State University campus next week in Madison, but when the Senate reconvenes in September as well.
While acknowledging those concerns, local business leaders outlined how data and technology are rapidly transforming their industries at Thursday’s conference.
In 2010, his bank handled just more than 3 million debit card transactions, Dana Dykhouse, president and CEO of First Premier Bank, said. In 2014, it did 4.7 million transactions. The number of customers depositing checks by taking photos of them on their smartphones is increasing exponentially as well, he added.
“Our operations now are driven by our customers, not by the industry,” Dykhouse said. “If I was to predict anything, I’d say that within 10 to 15 years, almost all of our financial transactions will take place on a device, whether it’s a phone or whatever that device is. … we will hold some device that will do all of our financial transactions, opening up accounts, applying for loans.”
Dr. Allison Suttle, chief medical officer for Sanford Health, said her health system’s patients have been conducting video chats on their smartphones with health care providers for the last year. That has driven down health care costs, saved patients’ time and resulted in people being able to get prescriptions for such common maladies as strep throat, sinus infections and more.
Technology and video chats allow providers to keep better tabs on their diabetes patients, Suttle says, and to connect with them more often. It allows providers to study electronic medical records and weather reports to predict when asthma sufferers might have episodes because of things like ragweed.
All of that enables health systems to “reach out to those patients before something is going to happen,” Suttle said. “What this allows us to do is provide the right care and the right amount of care to the right patient at the right time.”
Sherrie Peterson, director of Good Samaritan Society’s Living Well@Home program, said her organization provides clients monitoring technology that keeps track of their blood pressure, their pulse, their weight, their blood oxygen saturation and their glucose levels.
Monitoring data can also tell their team members about clients’ sleep habits, bathroom usage, even when they’re opening and closing doors. That can be especially important for the elderly, or for people with chronic physical or mental illnesses.
“All of that information comes into our team, where then they see it together,” Peterson said. If they see spikes in behavior out of the routine, say in bathroom activity, “we might jump to some conclusions that they might have something going on. So maybe the monitoring team reaches out to the individual, asks prompting and probing questions to find out what’s going on with that person. If there is reason for concern, we can elevate that to a professional care giver.”
Such technology is only going to become an even greater part of the fabric of South Dakota life in the future, conference participants said. Because of that, Thune, who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, said government leaders need to spend even more time making sure that privacy and security concerns are addressed.
“Cybersecurity is a huge issue from a national security standpoint. Obviously it’s a huge issue from an economic standpoint,” he said. “One of the bills that we’ll take up in the Senate soon after the Iran nuclear agreement debate is the cybersecurity bill that will enable and promote the kind of information sharing that is necessary … to prevent cyberattacks, or at least do our best to minimize the damage that the cyberattacks are going to do to our economy.”
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