The US National Security Agency (NSA) is planning to cut around 90% of its system administrators in order to limit access to secret information.
Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, reportedly told a cybersecurity conference in New York that the US spy agency would automate much of the work to improve security.
Alexander was quoted by Reuters as saying that "What we’re in the process of doing – not fast enough – is reducing our system administrators by about 90 percent."
The move from the NSA follows recent disclosures from whistleblower Edward Snowden about the US secret surveillance programmes.
"What we’ve done is we’ve put people in the loop of transferring data, securing networks and doing things that machines are probably better at doing," Alexander said.
Major firms which were tapped under Prism include Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Apple, PalTalk, AOL, Skype and YouTube.
