Online Info Blog: Growing sophistication of cyber attacks

Last February, hackers breached the U.S. Department of Justice’s database, releasing personal information on 10,000 Department of Homeland security employees and 20,000 FBI employees. That same month, the IRS announced that a 2015 breach compromised the information of some 700,000 American taxpayers, while the University of California-Berkeley revealed a records breach affecting 80,000 students, alumni and employees.

In October, Yahoo reported that a breach believed to have occurred in 2014 affected as many as 500 million user accounts – one of the largest such breaches to date. On Oct. 21, cyber attackers took down the internet for a large swath of the Eastern United States for most of the day, using a malware virus known as Mirai that attacks vulnerable internet-connected devices such as web cameras, DVRs and routers.

As these high-profile cases make clear, today’s cyber attackers are highly sophisticated. “These attacks just keep happening over and over again. Businesses are very anxious, and even fearful,” said Scott Logan, technical director of security for NetGain Technologies Inc., Kentucky’s largest managed IT firm with offices in Lexington, Louisville and out of state. “Many of these attacks could not only force you to lose information, but they could also ruin your brand. If you’re a bank and you become breached, how do you assure your customers that you’re going to be able to protect their money?”

The bottom line is simple. “Companies are going to need to invest in more technology to protect them from security threats,” said Brendan Jacobson, co-founder of NetGain Technologies. “It is just going to get worse.”