MAITLAND, Fla. – Following an announcement by the Florida Department of Health regarding a “possible cyber incident” discovered in late June, concerns about data security have surfaced.
The incident reportedly affected the state’s vital statistics system, responsible for handling birth and death certificates.
“It’s not a tremendous surprise, to be perfectly honest,” said Rob Allen, Chief Product Officer for cybersecurity company ThreatLocker.
News 6 visited ThreatLocker’s Maitland headquarters on Tuesday to understand the implications of such breaches. Allen emphasized the real-world impact of these incidents.
[EXCLUSIVE: Become a News 6 Insider (it’s FREE) | PINIT! Share your photos]
“There’s actually a lady in the building who I work with whose mom suddenly passed away recently. She can’t get the death certificate, so they can’t get her cremated. There are real-world implications,” said Allen. “It tends to be low-hanging fruit.”
As data thieves become more complex, Allen said everyone should assume their data has been leaked.
“Unfortunately, there isn’t too much you can do. So it’s not as if you can click your fingers and your information will be deleted. It doesn’t work like that,” Allen said.
Additionally, experts said it’s important hackers aren’t rewarded.
“Florida has an approach of not paying ransoms, which I absolutely commend. They should not pay ransoms, no one should pay ransoms. It’s a slippery slope. If nobody paid, there’d be no such thing as ransomware because it wouldn’t pay to do it,” Allen said.
No timeline has been given for when the system will be once again operational.
Get today’s headlines in minutes with Your Florida Daily: