Dutchess County and Marist promote cybersecurity
TOWN OF POUGHKEEPSIE – Dutchess County government and Marist College reunited after a COVID pause to hold a cybersecurity summit at the Town of Poughkeepsie campus. The event brought hundreds of people to the location to discuss strategies for preventing cyber-terrorism, considered one of the biggest threats faced by government and private companies today.
“In today’s world, cybersecurity is one of the biggest issues faced by organizations,” said Dutchess County Executive Bill O’Neil. “The consequences of being hacked are severe in terms of lost data, the time it takes people to recover from it and of course the money losses.”
O’Neil pointed to the recent threat to Rockland County’s data after a county vendor was the victim of a cyber attack. The FBI and Homeland Security are investigating a December incident discovered by Cott Systems Inc., a database software administrator for Rockland County after it detected malware in its infrastructure that stores records for the county. Both federal agencies said the malware was placed by a group of worldwide criminals that target computer systems.
The county records were not compromised during the event but the county was unable to access them. Rockland County Executive Ed Day said his ITS department regularly makes upgrades and improvements to the county’s computer infrastructure in an attempt to defend against such attacks.
At the summit, County Executive O’Neil told Mid-Hudson News that Dutchess County has a very progressive information systems department that is very diligent in defending against attacks such as the one in Rockland. He also noted that Marist has been at the forefront of addressing cybersecurity and the college has a longstanding relationship with IBM which has yielded tremendous results in the information systems arena.
Gloss