Patchogue addresses cybersecurity concerns at board meeting

The countywide data breach in Suffolk has one village taking preemptive steps to prevent a cyberattack.

Mayor of Patchogue Paul Pontieri addressed residents' cybersecurity concerns at Monday's board meeting.

The company that handles the village's cybersecurity, Sourcepass, laid out what they do to keep residents' data secure.

"Your email for example, one of the very important moves is having email in the cloud because email again is one of the largest vectors in how organizations get attacked," said cybersecurity expert Dan Levy.

In additional to ensuring secure email access, the cybersecurity company also says they use a layered defense to keep data protected, which they say includes multi-factor identification and backing up information in more than one place.

Pontieri says that the village has updated all of its computers in an effort to ensure they are doing their part to keep information of the more than 12,000 residents secure.

"If you don't watch yourself, if you don't do what we're doing here, constantly update ourselves as to where we're at, you, you get into a problem," Pontieri said.

Pontieri said cybersecurity costs are a significant part of the budget.