Cyber security expert has some advice to guard your online information

With recent cyber-attacks throughout Ontario, one cyber security expert has some ideas on what can be done to improve security.

As more institutions like Toronto’s Sick Kids are being hit by cyber attacks, one online security expert said the majority of the attacks are financially motivated.

“So, we don’t know if this was targeted or if it just so happens that Sick Kids got caught in the net of the hackers,” said Ritesh Kotak, cybersecurity and tech analyst.

“There’s a couple components to this. The first one is, it is a world-recognized hospital and then secondly, when you have an institution of that size, you can demand larger ransoms.”

Kotak said hackers normally have their eyes on certain places.

“There’s always this internal rivalry amongst hackers on who can get the highest prey, essentially,” he said.

“Hospitals, governments, municipalities, they are the top of the food chain so hackers will actively try to exploit these networks.”

Being an institution of any size make it a target for cybercrime, and creates major risks for people’s personal information.

“Imagine you have a business to run, you conduct your work on particular devices ... and you just can’t log in,” said Kotak.

“Just think of type of data you have on these devices. It could be your address, your social insurance number, email addresses, passwords, you name it -- the list goes on and on. And imagine if that information got into the hands of hackers, they could leverage that for identify theft, they could extort you.”

Kotak said there are ways to lower the risk of a cyber attack, starting with an audit of your systems.

“Cyber hygiene is what I call it,” he said.

“Understand the threats, understand how to protect yourself, because it’s important to understand that cyber security’s not a check box exercise, it is something that continues to evolve and a threat today might not be a threat tomorrow because there’s a new threat that we haven’t even thought about.”

Kotak said it’s vital people back up their material and be sure their accounts are secured.