While St. Paul officials have not determined if residents’ personal data is at risk following Friday’s cyberattack, precautions can be taken to protect against identity theft and unauthorized transactions.
Attacks like the one in St. Paul provide a chance to remind people how they can try to strengthen their own cybersecurity, according to people who teach and work in IT.
Brian Huilman, department chair at Minneapolis College’s School of Information Technology, said the cyberattacks are increasing and they serve as a reminder to have good cyber hygiene. The attack provided a chance to raise awareness that “there are things that everybody can do to help,” he said.
“From all the things I’ve seen, there is nothing to panic about regarding the St. Paul event,” he said. “I think it’s a call for education in letting everybody know that they have a responsibility for preventing this.”
Soumya Sen, a cybersecurity expert and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, said people can and should take cybersecurity precautions earlier rather than later when there are cybersecurity breaches. He suggested:
- Monitoring all financial institutions closely, including potentially putting some daily limits on debit card accounts.
- Vary your passwords. If you used the same password for your St. Paul account and other accounts, change those other accounts’ passwords, too.
- Making sure multifactor authentication is set up on most accounts, but especially financial accounts.
Sen did not suggest freezing accounts or credit at this time since it is not clear who has been affected.
Moving forward, he said people need to be updating all their passwords annually and always using strong, unique passwords.
“We’re already seeing that there is a need for more awareness among consumers to understand what the security best practices are,” he said. “Having a strong password and multifactor authentication really increases the bar for the attackers for identity theft and carrying out transactions.”
