As news headlines continually demonstrate, local governments are becoming a top target for hackers and cybercriminals. Therefore, it’s critical that these institutions make every effort to secure their IT infrastructure before a cybersecurity incident occurs. In this case, a six-month delay in reporting the data breach would make it difficult for victims to identify data misuse, meaning that the lack of damages resembles more of a stroke of luck than an intentional strategy.

Hackers have many ways to access employee email accounts, but organizations can take steps to prevent some of these methods from being successful. For instance, proper training about phishing attacks can stop many bad actors in their tracks. At the same time, knowing if your employees’ email accounts are compromised can help sidestep breaches from happening in the first place.

A company’s workforce can be one of the most significant sources of cybersecurity risk, but any organization has the ability to transform their staff into the strong defense against a data breach. With the right awareness training, employees can learn to spot cybersecurity threats proactively by learning industry-wide best practices. As the costs associated with data breaches continue to grow incredibly steep, such training is becoming a relative bargain.

Phishing scams are entirely preventable, and any organization handling personally identifiable information needs to ensure that their employees are equipped to identify and report these increasingly prevalent threats. Exposed personal details usually find their way to the Dark Web, where bad actors can leverage them for a variety of nefarious purposes. It’s critical that companies are prepared with cybersecurity awareness and identity protection.

In many ways, PCM got lucky. Although hackers were mostly unsuccessful at obtaining client data, they were able to access systems with a trove of valuable information. Additionally, they were able to accomplish this by simply obtaining administrator credentials, which can be widely available on the Dark Web or through phishing scams. Knowing if this information is available is a critical and often overlooked component of any company’s security posture.