NAHANT — Town employees will be receiving cybersecurity training in 2022.
Employees will undergo Cybersecurity Awareness Training, a four-hour training course educating town employees on various aspects of cybersecurity that is provided by the Executive Office of Technology Services and Security.
Town Administrator Antonio Barletta said that it is important for small municipalities such as Nahant to receive this training.
“Cybersecurity is an issue of importance that grows every single year,” he said. “It’s constantly becoming more and more of an issue and something to be aware about — especially small municipalities like us.”
Barletta explained how these small localities are targets for cyber crime such as phishing.
“It’s so simple for a lot of towns like ours, a lot of smaller communities; we’re not big organizations, big cities; we don’t have the top-notch cybersecurity technology; many small towns don’t and so we are an easy target,” he said. “We are more vulnerable; so training our employees on how to identify fake emails or links that you shouldn’t click on is extremely important because it helps our town, it helps our employees protect the community and protect the town’s equipment. It makes us less vulnerable.”
Phishing is a cyber crime in which a target, or targets, are contacted by email, telephone, or text message by someone posing as a legitimate institution to lure individuals into providing sensitive data such as personally identifiable information, banking and credit-card details, and passwords according to Phishing.org
Phishing can result in identity theft as well as financial loss. The first phishing lawsuit was filed in 2004 against a California teenager who created the imitation of the website “America Online”. With this fake website, he was able to gain sensitive information from users and access their credit-card details to withdraw money from their bank accounts.
