MECKLENBURG COUNTY, N.C. — Hackers are stealing your money in a new way: by targeting local governments.
North Carolina state officials warn that cybercriminals are shifting their focus from individuals to taxpayer-funded departments like city governments and police departments.
In fact, it’s becoming such a big problem in North Carolina, state officials hosted a cyber-security symposium in Raleigh.
Several counties in our area have recently fallen victim to hackers and spammers over recent years, including Lincoln, Mecklenburg, Anson, Concord, and Cabarrus counties.
It's happened to state organizations, too, including both the NC Bar and the NCDOT just last week.
“If you think about all the services a government entity provides, the impact is immeasurable," said Maria Thompson, chief risk officer for the NC Department of Information Technology.
Thompson says the online crooks are going after not only taxpayer dollars but also taxpayers’ personal information in some cases.
In an average month, Thompson says the state gets hit with 12 million malicious events.
“They’ve monetized this," she said. "They’re always trying to penetrate our environments, trying to get access to our data.”
Unfortunately, it often only takes one employee to slip up by clicking on a bad link or bad pop up or falling for a spam email.
Over the summer, Cabarrus County was scammed out of $1.7 million because crooks spoofed an email address of a legitimate vendor building the new West Cabarrus high school.
County employees didn’t notice the spoofed email was one letter off, and sent the money right into the scammer’s account.
That taxpayer money meant for the school was never recovered.
Commissioners still had to pay the real vendor, so they had to pull money from the county emergency fund.
On Friday, North Carolina state officials held a cybersecurity forum in Raleigh, teaching IT representatives from multiple state agencies about this growing crime, and how they can protect critical state dollars from falling into the wrong hands.