Head of Las Vegas FBI urges cyber security awareness
Nevadans ranked fifth in the country among victims who fell prey to cyber criminals last year, according to FBI figures.
The more than 17,000 crimes included ransomware, extortion, government impersonation and identity theft. They amounted to nearly $84 million in loses, the data shows.
Some cyber attacks are more consequential than others, Spencer Evans, special agent in charge for the FBI in Las Vegas, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Thursday.
“Here in Nevada, you can imagine how that would look like for the gaming industry, for example, if somebody was able to shut down the networks of a major casino, or steal significant assets in that regard,” he said.
Similar incidents have affected Las Vegas in the past.
MGM Resorts International, which has properties on the Strip, confirmed reports that the company was hacked in 2019 and that guest information was stolen from a cloud server.
“It all, in some ways, is connected to computers and networks running those systems,” Evans said.
Corporations already work with federal government and law enforcement entities to secure their data, but regular citizens could also take action in protecting their personal information, which Evans called “the basics.”
That includes not using the same password for multiple access points and being aware that there are criminals ready to pounce, Evans said.
“Always doubt when someone’s asking you to part with your personal information or your financial information,” he said.
The FBI, which investigates cyber crimes, usually has to play “catch up” with perpetrators, Evans said.
But he noted that the agency has teams in every field office specifically dedicated to combating the problem.
“The FBI and our law enforcement partners are definitely up to the task,” he said. “We like to say that the long arm of the law and the significant reach that we have makes it so that no criminal is beyond our capability to identify and arrest them.”
To learn more about cyber security and to file a report, visit the FBI’s Internet Fraud Complaint Center at ic3.gov.
Contact Ricardo Torres-Cortez at rtorres@reviewjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @rickytwrites.
