At the time, Utah Public Safety Commissioner Keith Squires thought that was massive. “But this last year we have had spikes of over 300 million attacks against the state databases” each day: a 10,000-fold increase.

Why? Squires says it is probably because Utah is home to the new, secretive National Security Agency computer center, and hackers believe they can somehow get to it through state computer systems.

“I really do believe it was all the attention drawn to the NSA facility. In the cyberworld, that’s a big deal,” Squires told a legislative budget committee Tuesday. “I watched as those increases jumped so much over the last few years. And talking to counterparts in other states, they weren’t seeing that amount of increase like we were.”

Rep. Curt Oda, R-Clearfield, said the state should approach NSA or the federal government for money to help in defending against the cyberattacks.