County Commissioners across state discuss cyber attack prevention

Statewide County Commissioners met for day two of their three day training session, with the main topic of discussion being the prevention of cyber attacks.

Boone County Commissioner Janet Thompson was in attendance and spoke with ABC 17 News about how the county is preventing itself from being cyber attacked.

“It really is a question of vigilance in which we can have problems in our system and it’s often the big problem is the people, we start to become relaxed about how we view our system,” Thompson said.

The Chief Information Security Officer for Missouri, Michael Roling, spoke to statewide commissioners about ways in which they can be hacked and what to look out for so their counties don’t become a target.

An statewide example that was used was “Operation Ferguson,” that happened back in the late summer and fall of 2014 after Mike Brown’s death.

Roling said the group anonymous that targeted the state, counties and cities in an effort to take down servers, networks, and websites within 24 hours after the death.

“Operation Ferguson”- lasted nearly three months, and was considered the largest attack on the state in the last five years.

“We have learned a lot from that attack and we’re working on making sure we don’t have another one like that,” Roling said.

The use of social media was something that Roling said the state is getting better at monitoring.