New Minnesota law takes aim at tracking and reporting cyberattacks

CBS News

2 days ago

The city of St. Paul's continued recovery from a cyberattack comes at a time when a new law is in place that aims to better track the growing number of cyberattacks across the state.
St. Paul has even identified the group that is responsible for its attack. The group is Interlock, and its members have been targeting websites for years.
WCCO asked Craig Sixta, the chief technology officer for Element Technologies, why agencies are not arresting hackers.
"Nobody's arresting them because they are almost always foreign actors. It's very rare for bad actors like this to be operating within the U.S. The FBI is very good at catching them when they're in the U.S, but often they are in Russia, they are in China, they are in Nigeria," said Sixta.
A new Minnesota law requires governments and public entities to report cyberattacks within 72 hours to the state and notify victims whose data has been breached. Starting next year, the law will require the state to issue an annual report on cyberattacks.
Sixta says governments and private businesses invest heavily in trying to protect themselves from cyberattacks, investments that all of us ultimately pay for.
"It's costing billions. I mean literally billions. The amount organizations every company spends on cybersecurity grows every single year," said Sixta.
Sixta says the St. Paul breach, like most breaches, large or small, probably started with one person clicking on a phishing email.
"Nine out of every 10 breaches that we work at Element, maybe even more than that, start with a business email compromise, somebody clicking one business email, one business email and that is the gateway. That's not to say that there aren't other ones, but this is by far the most common. Emails are the gateway for bad actors," said Sixta.