ERIE, Pa. — Cyberattacks siphoned $6.9 billion from U.S. businesses in 2021, according to the FBI’s annual Internet Crime Complaint Center report. Tech-support scams, identity thefts and data breaches all increased.
Nearly half of those attacks targeted employee email accounts, according to the report.
“Business owners too often look at cybersecurity as an IT issue,” said Jim Bahm, president and CEO of Networking Technologies and a featured speaker at the Dec. 2 ERIE Conference at Penn State Behrend. “It’s bigger than that. What we’re seeing is a human vulnerability – a failure in the way we hire and train people and make them aware of the risks.”
Those risks extend to employees’ personal lives, where so many daily moments are documented on social media, Bahm said.
“I don’t post pictures of my dog, or mention my dog’s name, on Facebook,” he said. “There’s too much risk. That’s always one of the first security questions, right? ‘What was the name of your first pet?’ If the answer is out there, anywhere, your data can be compromised.”
This year’s ERIE Conference focused on cybersecurity threats: malware, ransomware, phishing and…
