Late on a Friday evening in the beginning of February, staff at the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles, California began to report issues accessing portions of the hospital’s network. As the administration would soon learn, their system had been infected with a piece of malicious software that had encrypted critical files and databases. The malicious software provided the hospital with an ultimatum—pay up, or never have access to these files again.
READIf you pay attention to the issue of cyber security and data breaches, you’ll surely hear about a slew of malicious attacks from sophisticated hacking organizations and complex high-tech espionage. Recently, the chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Mary Jo White, even went so far as to say that cyber attacks are the “biggest risk we face” as a nation.
READLate in 2013, the FBI discovered that a Chinese hacker called UglyGorilla was seeking access to parts of a U.S. utility company’s systems that would allow him to remotely cut off heat or damage pipelines.
READRecently the news media has been full of reports of companies, cities, states, and other groups getting stung by costly data breaches. These crimes not only deplete corporate and public funds, but increase insurance rates and take a huge toll on an entity’s reputation. Reasonable safeguards could protect your district from these perils, and potentially save you a lot of time and money.
READ