Came across this interview this morning with Vermont’s Chief Information Security Officer Kris Rowley. It’s interesting — not that Vermont has a chief information security officer, but that she’s only been on the job for seven months. According to Rowley, “[Information] security in the state of Vermont is very young right now.”  

Really? That’s surprising, considering that Norwich University is on the cutting edge of cyber-warfare defense and digital security for the U.S. military and intelligence communities. Perhaps state government is finally catching up to its own private (educational) sector. Just wish Rowley didn’t drop the word “stovepipe” so often. Makes it sound like our wood stoves are at risk from global terrorists. 

This article appears in May 20-26, 2009.

Staff Writer Ken Picard is a senior staff writer at Seven Days. A Long Island, N.Y., native who moved to Vermont from Missoula, Mont., he was hired in 2002 as Seven Days’ first staff writer, to help create a news department. Ken has since won numerous regional and national awards for his features, profiles and investigative stories and had his work picked up by international news outlets. He was the first journalist to shine a light on the thousands of undocumented workers in Vermont’s dairy...