ATLANTA — The continuous attacks against Ukraine by Russia has United States government officials on edge. Recently, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued what's known as a Shields Up Alert.
The agency's website says, "Every organization—large and small—must be prepared to respond to disruptive cyber activity."
Luckily, Stephanie Benoit-Kurtz, a cybersecurity expert from the University of Phoenix, told 11Alive there are proactive steps organizations can take.
"With this heightened threat level, it becomes just more important for organizations to be diligent. And those are things like making sure that your system is patched, making sure that you have endpoint protection, validating that you have malware software and that you're running scans on your devices," she told 11Alive's Karys Belger.
Benoit-Kurtz also emphasized the kind of cyber-attacks the CISA is warning businesses about; most notably, the ransomware attack on the Colonial Access Pipeline in 2021.
She explained preventative measures, like making sure the software for all systems is updated, can prevent potentially damaging cyberattacks. It's also important to regularly run tests on computer systems and keep antivirus software up-to-date.
"What happens is the bad guys find ways to exploit vulnerabilities and develop software. And that's whether it's Microsoft Apple products, or browsers like Google Chrome or Safari," she said. "So, it's super important to make sure that those vulnerabilities are found."
Having employees maintain that diligence at home can also prevent potential cyberattacks as well.
"You're not using social media logins and passwords for work or corporate access, you've changed your passwords and you use complex passwords for places like financial accounts, your checking accounts, sending your credit cards where you're doing online banking. Make sure that those passwords are complex," Benoit-Kurtz explained
In the event you do find your systems have been compromised, she recommends doing whatever is necessary to clean the system and keep a record of when they occur.