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COLUMBIA (WACH) - In the wake of the South Carolina hacking incident, many people are asking how it could happen to a state institution on such a large scale.

According to WACH Fox's tech expert, Stephen Miano, although it's shocking that more than 3.5 million people in the palmetto state had their private information compromised, it's not that surprising.

Miano says private information and data are threatened on a daily basis; governments, companies and individuals around the world are constantly being attacked. He says often cyber security isn't as strong as you may think, and the way into a company or government's system can happen any number of ways.

“I'm going to guess that it's lowest common denominator security, there are large networks, tons of computers. All it would take is one user to bring in one compromised flash drive, to open one infected email, to leave a machine unlocked for a certain amount of time. These are vulnerable operating systems,” said tech expert Stephen Miano.

Miano says what's even more sad is that we could be seeing the fallout from this situation for years to come. As is the case with identity theft, if a crook can piece a social security number together with other pertinent information they can assume their targeted victim’s identity.