MAINE, Maine — Dr. Lori Sussman is an assistant professor in the University of Southern Maine's Department of Technology.
Sussman retired from the United States Army in 2007 and has worked for many technology companies. She was also the presidential communications lead for Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton and served as chief information officer for the U.S. Department of Defense.
Sussman said that as the war in Ukraine drags on, there are growing concerns about the potential for Russian cyberattacks here in the United States.
Cyberattacks can involve hackers stealing, changing, exposing, or destroying your personal and private information.
"These days, there's a technique called spearfishing, where they will impersonate people to target folks who have access to money or access to data that they could sell," Sussman said. "The thing that the scammers are interested in at the end of the day is stealing your identity and data so that they can sell it."
Here are some tips from Sussman:
- To keep your computer, social media, and other account profiles safe, change all of your passwords frequently.
- Choose stronger passwords with more characters, numbers, and signs.
- Don't click on texts, links, or emails from people or places that you don't know.
- You should not answer calls from people you don't know. If it's urgent, they will text or leave a voicemail.
- Sussman said many people are taking advantage of the war in Ukraine and creating fake donation websites. To avoid being scammed, go to the actual website of the organization to donate.
- Only use trusted wi-fi networks.
- Back up your important documents to an external hard drive in case a cyberattack happens to you or your company.
- Every organization, big or small, should have a plan on how to respond to a cyberattack.
"If they ask for money in Bitcoin, in gift cards, in ways that can't be traced, that's a huge red flag. The second is if they have a strange urgency .. 'If I don't get this money, I'll be in jail for three days' ... They'll have some kind of sob story," Sussman said.