WEST CHESTER TOWNSHIP — On Tuesday, West Chester Township became the latest municipality to say it’s been hit by a potential cybersecurity breach.
[DOWNLOAD: Free WHIO-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]
Township officials said they were alerted that a “malicious hacking group” appeared to have targeted their central email server.
Just last week, the city of Middletown said it was hit with a cyberattack.
News Center 7 reported on how it impacted several city services.
TRENDING STORIES:
- Doctor gets jail time for setting Ohio home on fire
- In her bridal era: Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce announce engagement
- Ohio car dealership owner pleads guilty to altering odometers on hundreds of vehicles
In late 2023, we were in Huber Heights covering the city declaring a state of emergency after a ransomware attack.
Earlier this summer, two years after the fact, Premier Health announced it had been hit with a cyberattack in 2023.
In May, we covered the ransomware attack at Kettering Health.
“I track the activities of cybercriminals online and identify threats as they emerge and publish reports and blog posts summarizing what I’ve found,” Luke Connolly, threat intelligence analyst, said.
News Center 7 asked Connolly about why cities and health networks are so often targeted in these kinds of attacks.
“So what these criminal groups do is try to make money, and the way they do that is to look for victims who have access to data, which is sensitive data,” Connolly said. “If the data is sensitive, that can be really a bad thing. So that’s why they specifically target victims or potential victims like school boards, hospitals. and governments because by their very nature, they have the type of sensitive information that people would not want to be generally available on the internet.”
He suggested three things to protect yourself: monitor your credit report, change your passwords, and make sure you have two-factor or multi-factor authentication enabled for every system you have online that supports it.
[SIGN UP: WHIO-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
©2025 Cox Media Group
