Cyber Attacks Aren’t Going Away

Malware, Phishing, Ransomware.  Hopefully these are all terms that you and your employees are familiar with.  These aren’t things that happen just to business, but affect county governments, courts, and even the most recent presidential campaign.

This is to say that big or small, everyone can be a target.  Large cities such as Atlanta have dealt with attacks, which are not insignificant to recover from, and can take more than a week to even get computer systems running.  While this is obviously a large inconvenience, in terms of both lost productivity, and providing constituents access to crucial government resources, individual citizens need to worry about information such as their date of birth, social security number, or other pieces of sensitive data being acquired by thieves.

In a recent Government Technology article, Missouri Chief Information Security Officer Michael Roling was quoted as saying that regarding cyber attacks, he sees “no sign that it will slow down anytime soon.”  This is why governments must be vigilant in securing themselves against potential threats, but also ensure that they limit any available data from would be intruders.

We’ve previously talked a bit about how governments are both regulating for, and accepting as payment, cryptocurrencies in their districts.  The new cryptocurrency issue governments need to be aware of is hackers using government resources to create more of these currencies, with the taxpayers on the hook for the energy and reduced productivity connected with the mining of bitcoin and other cryptos.

Between attacks on your citizens’ personal information, illicit use of your servers, it’s clear that cyber attacks not only currently need vigilance, but will require an awareness of what sorts of new vulnerabilities may exist in the future.

At Extract, we’re committed to making sure that private information is properly redacted before it’s made available to the public and before has the chance to be unlawfully accessed.  Our automated redaction software finds personal information in unstructured documents and ensures its safety.

If you’d like to learn more about how we can help with ensuring your constituents’ private information is safe, reach out today, and we’d be happy to tell you more.