PEORIA, Ill. – Cyber attacks in central Illinois have been on the rise recently, according to a local cyber security expert.
The issue of cyber security has become more prevalent in the past month with attacks on Tazewell County government and OSF Healthcare.
Dave Johnson of Pearl Technology tells WMBD’s “Greg and Dan” that the amount they’re dealing with currently is “a little crazy.”
“We’re working multiple incident responses ourselves right now, with people who’ve been ransomwared,” Johnson said.
Johnson says the attacks involve one party writing malware and finding another party to execute the attacks. He says the two parties will then split whatever amount of money they can get from the attack.
Sometimes a hacker will not need a lot of information to start an attack, with Johnson saying an old email address may be all that’s needed.
“Let’s say I used to work at WMBD Radio, I’ve been gone for five years, but my david.johnson @ WMBDradio is still out there. I might have had a weak password,” Johnson said.
Johnson says the weak password could be the key that a hacker uses to get a person’s information. He says another common tactic is phishing, where someone is tricked into giving away their personal information.
Johnson does say there are ways to prevent a cyber attack from happening before it occurs.
“Before the breach, you oughta be doing like a risk assessment, security awareness training, multi-factor authentication, complex passwords, all things that’ll help stop the boom,” Johnson said.
He says people should have a plan in place if a breach does occur, which includes contacting a cyber insurance company.
