Hackers and bots make attempts every day to break into the Shawano County computer systems.
Every day, Matt Hietpas, technology services director, and his staff combat the onslaught of attacks.
A recent attempt was discussed Oct. 16 at the meeting of the Shawano County Executive Committee.
“We implemented password changes organization-wide. We implemented other security postures,” Hietpas said. “We had a firewall specialist spend about 16 hours on our firewall to make sure our best practices are followed and up to date.”
Hietpas said he continues to go through the reports generated from the attack and response.
Hietpas said it’s a never-ending battle. Hackers aren’t just trying to break into the system for the information that is there; they also want access to other sites to which the county is connected. For example, the system at the sheriff’s department and jail have several connections to state and federal systems, and breaking into one system can help give access to others.
Information on county computers also includes personal information on employees as well as records of residents, such as births, deaths, court files, tax documents and more.
“That’s we invest heavily in our firewalls. The other two layers are the managed detection response that we put in back in December … and the endpoint protection,” Hietpas said. “I think we’re sitting pretty good.”
In September, county email accounts encountered more than 800 phishing attempts.
Email phishing is when cybercriminals disguise themselves as trustworthy entities via email, hoping to trick the user into revealing personal information like passwords, credit card numbers or other sensitive data. They often craft convincing messages, playing on people’s trust or fear to get them to click on malicious links or download dangerous attachments.
Of those 800-plus attempts, 264 were financial scams, 232 were harvesting for credentials and 77 were for social engineering.
Financial support from the executive committee for the past five years or so has helped beef up the county’s cybersecurity measures.
“Counties that have lacked that resource have a lot more risk,” he said. “Everybody has risks.”
Software companies continually have updates and patches to install when problems are discovered, but like residents find out with their home computers, the fixes aren’t always perfect.
“There’s always software updates. We’re always fighting the battle of what needs to be patched and how soon,” Hietpas said. “The other issue with Windows patches and software updates is they can come out right now for a quick fix, but they can break something else as soon as you implement them. So, the first ones that implement them might have hours spent on troubleshooting, because now it broke something else.”
Jim Davel, administrative coordinator, praised Hietpas and his team for the work they do.
“This is every day. This is not like one day there’s a cyber attack,” he said. “It’s every single day that our network — everybody’s network — is getting probed.”
Including Hietpas, the technology services department team has nine people, with two of them dedicated to GIS (geographic information system) updates. GIS consists of integrated computer hardware and software that store, manage, analyze, edit, output and visualize geographic data.
The property listing office is also housed with technology services and consists of two full-time positions. They do not assist with any technology work but work extensively with the GIS team.
The others support all county operations, including technical guidance and direction; strategic planning; systems design, implementation and computer programming; computer networking; training; and safeguarding of the county’s technological assets.
kpasson@newmedia-wi.com
Cybersecurity requires constant vigilance
