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Steps being taken to protect Knox County servers

The Knox County Board approved an item at Wednesday night’s meeting that would provide extensive training for county employees to better protect government computers. 

County Clerk Scott Erickson informed the board of the new training and testing that county employees will be going through to prevent security breaches on government servers.

The goal is to prevent employees from allowing malicious software onto computers through phishing emails.

Phishing scams incorporate fraudulent emails that look legitimate that provide a link or seek personal information for malicious intent.

Erickson tells WGIL that the county has taken some active steps to prevent attacks on the county.

While he wouldn’t give specifics, Erickson tells WGIL that the county has “hardened down our networks and restricted certain incoming network traffic in an attempt to better position ourselves.”

He informed the board on Wednesday that he gets notified via email when there is an attempt, and his inbox contains thousands of emails – although not all pertain to network attacks.

“So it’s becoming more and more prevalent and [there are] a lot more attacks that are coming on all government levels,” Erickson told board members. “So [vitally] important that if you don’t know what it is, don’t click it.”

Erickson is a member of the Cyber Security Task Force with the State and has been working to develop best practices and awareness of cyber issues.

It had been revealed in May of 2017 that the state board of elections had been hacked, with the voter information for over 14,000 Galesburg residents being affected.

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