More than half of the people who have Kingston school district email accounts opened a potentially damaging phishing email sent to them by a firm that's helping the district gauge vulnerability to cyber attacks. Shaughnessy said he was one of the people who opened the email and clicked on the link.
“Emails [were] sent to people, trying to get them to click on it and then enter their password and that gives the attacker access into the system,” he said at Wednesday's board meeting. "... It happens that I was one of the people who clicked on the link.”
District Technology Director Gary Tomczyk said 770 email account holders did not open the email and 94 asked administrators if the email was valid.
Kingston school district officials said there have been recent successful cyber attacks against the nearby Livingston Manor, Monroe-Woodbury and Chester school districts.
Shaughnessy said the Kingston school district is working with BOCES in an effort to shore up cyber defenses. He said a firm called Checkpoint has been helping the BOCES Mid-Hudson Regional Information Center develop filtering and alert systems. New-school security awareness training could train your users to look out for suspicious emails that require to click on a link.
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