City of San Marcos email accounts and other communication services brought down by cyber-attack

Exploit: Cyber-attack
City of San Marcos: Local government municipality

Risk to Small Business: 1.666 = Severe: Hackers accessed the city’s computer systems and restricted access to significant portions of their IT infrastructure. The attack, which began on October 24th, brought down email accounts and other communication services. As a result, messages sent to city employees were not delivered, though government facilities remain open. Recovering from the attack is proving especially difficult, as the services are still restricted for more than a week after the initial event. To prevent further attacks, employees are being asked to change their passwords and enable two-factor authentication on their accounts.

Individual Risk: No personal information was compromised in the breach.

Customers Impacted: Unknown
How it Could Affect Your Customers’ Business: Many cybersecurity vulnerabilities can be mitigated by adopting adequate preventative measures. For instance, using strong, unique passwords and two-factor authentication can prevent hackers from using stolen credentials to access accounts and dig deeper into your company’s IT environment. As the costs associated with breach continue to pile up, the ROI on implementing cybersecurity defense becomes easily apparent.infrastructure.

Risk Levels:

1 - 1.5 = Extreme Risk
1.51 - 2.49 = Severe Risk
2.5 - 3 = Moderate Risk

*The risk score is calculated using a formula that considers a wide range of factors related to the assessed breach.