Republican state Rep. Michael Dovilla of Berea is on a mission to make Ohio safe from cyber attacks.

Dovilla is the lead sponsor of House Bill 331, which would create a council of public and private security experts to work together to protect critical information from hackers.

In recent years, state officials have made significant changes to its cyber security policy. Encrypted information is installed on state computers that workers take home. State-issued mobile phones also carry encrypted information incase phones are lost or stolen.

Dovilla said that he wants public and private security experts to work together and share the best practices of protecting critical information from hackers.

Two data theft incidents the state has had include: in 2010, when hackers accessed an unsecured server at The Ohio State University and reached more than 700,000 records of former and current students; and in 2007, when a government intern allowed to take home a back-up storage disk, had it stolen from his car. The names and Social Security numbers of all 64,000 state employees, along with thousands of others, were on the disk.