Ransomware attacks continue to increase with some ferocity. The security infrastructure of public offices in different states and cities are constantly under threat and trying to block, detect and remove ransomware.
Cyberattacks in Hawaii
Hawaii faces more than 10,000 cyberattacks daily. Last week, computer systems in Oahu, Hawaii were halted midway through operations and were unable to function. There were suspicions of a ransomware attack, but it was soon cleared that this was due to a maintenance problem.
According to Mark Wong, Director for the City and County of Honolulu’s Department of Information Technology, they had been extremely lucky to evade cybersecurity attacks despite cybercriminals trying continuously to infect governmental, public and private computers with malware and ransomware on a daily basis.
Moreover, he said that the numbers of these attacks are between 40 to 45 million as their security departments have been able to detect them in time and remove ransomware and other dangerous malwares.
A majority of the computer systems are able to succeed in evading cyber threats due to the presence of anti malware and anti ransomware tools. However, not all attacks can be contained through the use of these tools.
Phishing
Additionally, according to Mr.Wong, currently most of their investigative proceedings are related to attacks that involve phishing campaigns. Cybercriminals encourage people to type their login details and use these details to corrupt their PCs with malware and ransomware.
Mr. Wong’s department has countered this threat by testing people with fake phishing campaigns. This, way people can be educated about these attacks and learn how to deal with them in future when a real hacker tries to attack.
Security Measures
Employees in the department of the City and County of Honolulu do not have access to internet. Instead a proxy is used which helps to negate the infection of a cyberattack significantly. Moreover, all the systems of states’ departments have been separated. Thus, if a cyberattack manages to attack one department, then it will not succeed in proliferation of other departments.
According to ransomware removal experts, unluckily, not everyone had the same success with ransomware attacks as Hawaii. There are some towns in the country whose public data was compromised and hence they were forced to pay a great amount of money to cybercriminals.
