Cybersecurity chief warns: city of Boise faces relentless cyber attacks

BOISE, Idaho — The City of Boise is taking a proactive approach to cybersecurity as threats from cybercriminals continue to rise. Alexandra Winkler, the city's Chief Information Officer, emphasized the constant danger faced by government entities.

"Every single government entity is being targeted every single day, every single hour, every single minute. Nobody is safe," Winkler said.

Winkler highlighted the importance of maintaining robust defenses against potential cyberattacks. "We have to assume it's just a matter of time so not only do we need to as a city government protect against it, we need to keep our collected defense up at all times," she said.

The city faces threats from various sources, including criminal organizations and nation-states. "You have the criminal set, you have the nation states that are funding the criminal set, and you have the nation states themselves," Winkler explained. "And who they're targeting is city governments, its education, it's hospitals, etc. including the City of Boise."

City employees regularly receive phishing emails, and cybercriminals attempt to breach firewalls by testing passwords. "We see them poking at our firewalls trying to get in, taking our usernames and blasting those firewalls with test passwords," Winkler said.

Winkler recently attended a cybersecurity summit in Washington, D.C., where she discussed best practices with other officials. "The biggest takeaways I got from the cybersecurity summit included that we're all in this together, we're all experiencing the same things," she said.

Despite the ongoing threats, Winkler expressed confidence in the city's cybersecurity measures. "We're on the right track, defending the city of Boise in the way it needs to be defended. We're focusing on the right things, the same things other states and local municipalities are focused on," she said.

Boise's cybersecurity team has been upgrading systems over the past year, implementing 24-7 surveillance, security patching, multi-factor authentication, and phishing training for staff. "Our employees are our first line of defense," Winkler said. "We have all kinds of different tools. Monitors, systems, services that are constantly looking at our systems and trying to make sure we are detecting any bad guys."

Winkler stressed the need to stay ahead of cybercriminals. "The bad actors are just tricky and they're getting smarter every single day so we have to assume that not only do we have to keep up our own defenses, but that we have to be able to respond in the event they do get in," she said.

When it comes to personal security, Winkler says there are a lot of things you can do. She offered these six suggestions.