OHIO — Significant increases in cyber attacks are keeping IT workers busy. The City of Columbus is working to get IT services back on track for customers. This, as it faced an unspecified cyber security incident late last week. 

What You Need To Know

  • The city said customers faced IT outages and would notify anyone impacted 
  • According to new data released by Checkpoint Research, there’s been a 30% year-over-year increase in cyber attacks globally for the second quarter
  • Education, government and health care industries are the top entities facing the greatest attacks 
  • Cyber security experts said social engineering, human error and increased accessibility to threats are some of the top reasons we’re seeing the rise

Israel Arroyo, founder and owner of Stealth Entry Cyber Security Solutions, said we’re seeing the increase “because of the fact that more people in the world are accessible” and with that increased accessibility.

“You open up that threat landscape. You open it up exponentially because now you trust everyone," he said. “When you have something that you think you can trust that looks legitimate, it's going to trick people.”

That has nothing to do with those having limited knowledge about programming but just enough to circumvent and bring down entire systems. 

Looking at the rise in incidents, one area seeing the greatest attacks is health care.

“Protected health information is actually more valuable than credit card data now on the web," he said. “You can manipulate health insurance premiums by having people's health information."

As technology evolves, he noted that it is tough to keep up with protection, especially with the rise of AI. Even so, he said protecting yourself by using two-factor authentications, changing passwords and installing anti-virus software on devices are all things that can still be helpful.