Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called for a "new national commission" to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election to prevent future cyberattacks.

"We need a national commission to look into what actually really did happen and what could happen in order to protect our elections," Clinton said Thursday while addressing a crowd at Rutgers University's Eagleton Institute of Politics.

She also called on "every state to do everything it can" to get to the bottom of what happened within their own elections and prevent hackers from accessing their voting systems in the future.

The Department of Homeland Security notified 21 states, including key battleground states Wisconsin and Virginia, last September that they have found evidence that Russian entities have attempted to hack their voting systems.

Clinton heralded Virginia as a example of a state that has reassessed its vulnerability to hacking as it has turned back to a paper ballot system.