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PORTSMOUTH – The Durham Police Department. The Sunapee School District. The city of Salem.
What these three companies have in common, aside from being public agencies in Granite State, is that they have been attacked by ransomware, an online crime in which data is essentially hijacked and held hostage pending payment of a ransom become. Do not pay the ransom and the data will be destroyed or otherwise compromised.
According to watchdog agencies, there were a total of 304 million ransomware attacks worldwide in 2020. That was 62 percent more than in the previous year and the second highest value since 2014 with 638 million attacks in 2016.
Attacks like this became famous earlier this year because they affected the food chain (in the attack on JBS, the world’s largest meat packer) and the supply infrastructure (in the attack on the Colonial Pipeline).
A Portsmouth Company – ATOM Group (https://www.theatomgroup.com/) is doing everything it can to fend off these attacks by creating a new office to help local and state law enforcement, state government and the community health and outreach organizations, as well as nonprofits operating in New Hampshire, reduce their exposure to attacks from ransomware and other malware.
The new office will be in Concord, in the same building on Donovan Street as the New Hampshire Public Risk Management Exchange, an insurance pool for public and private groups and agencies, also known as Primex.
“The establishment of the Concord office will enable ATOM to expand its cybersecurity incident response teams and provide a platform for service and collaboration with New Hampshire public institutions, law enforcement and nonprofits by providing services such as training, collaboration and advanced cybersecurity Skills and forensic software at zero or significantly reduced cost to the organizations that serve our citizens every day, ”said Jason Sgro, ATOM Senior Partner.
Sgro sees it as a question of people, more than a question of technology.
“Ransomware and cybersecurity problems are not really solved by software, but by people. There is no panacea for that, ”said Sgro.
Human behavior can trigger a cyber attack, so people need to be educated about the risks of their online behavior.
Here too, according to the watchdogs, 54 percent of infections come from someone who clicks on a spam or phishing email.
“They are not trained and are tricked into taking an action that results in a ransomware attack,” said Sgro.
ATOM is building the office in collaboration with Primex to help its customers with online security. It is known as the Office for Public-Private Cooperation in Cybersecurity.
“We rented the room from them; it’s a natural extension of our footprint, ”said Sgro. “The office is actually divided into two areas. Part of that is just ATOM’s business expansion and need for more seating. And then there are a couple of offices and a large conference room that will be dedicated to public-private collaboration and cybersecurity. “
According to Sgro, it has a training area and serves as an incident response center in the event of a cyber attack.
Sgro will split his time between the new Concord office and ATOM’s current West End office at Jewell Court. Four employees will initially work at the Concord location; Around 20 people work in Portsmouth.
According to Sgro, ransomware comes in various forms and can affect data that is not only stored locally on a hard drive, but also in the cloud on a remote server.
One attack consists of destroying the data and only recovering it after paying the ransom. Another is to hijack and reveal the data if no ransom is paid. Another is to change the data (such as changing the information in the medical records) and not change it back until the ransom has been paid.
Sgro describes the bad guys as “threat actors”. He sees cases where threat actors contact cloud services and pretend to be victims of ransomware in order to gain access to data that they hold hostage if they are let in.
“I don’t think New Hampshire is any different when it comes to our cybersecurity readiness. I think everyone is surprised by this. That’s one of the reasons we choose to invest in people, ”said Sgro.
Securing a network against attacks can be expensive.
“You can look at hardware and software and all these expensive things and they’re great if you can afford them,” he said. “But if you can’t, focus on the people because we can train people with relatively little effort. We can prepare them for emergencies in the same way as we prepare our other emergency helpers with relatively little effort. “
“Ransomware attacks are based on tricking someone in the beginning,” he added. “So if we have fewer people to be tricked, it’s not really expensive.”
U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan, D-NH, chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Spending Regulatory Affairs, and has been keeping an eye on ransomware as a new threat.
A recent subcommittee hearing included the testimony of Russell Holden, the superintendent of the Sunapee School District, who was attacked in 2019. The district’s data was confiscated and withheld for a ransom. The district was eventually able to resume operations without paying a ransom, Holden told the subcommittee, but the recovery took nine days and cost more than $ 40,000 in fees, materials, and hardware.
“More investment is needed at all levels of government to strengthen cyber defense,” said Hassan.
Sgro believes that the ransomware attacks are becoming more common and will evolve to bypass network defenses.
“This is just the beginning,” he said. “We’re standing on the bank, the tide is coming and we have a broom. This is not going to work. It’s part of the catalyst for public-private collaboration because neither of us is able to tackle this threat on our own. We have to get together and pool our resources. “
source https://collegeeducationnewsllc.com/portsmouth-firm-atom-group-expands-effort-to-fight-cyberattacks/
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