IOWA, La. (KPLC) - It’s happening more often – cyberattacks on local governments. The latest victim in our area was the Town of Iowa.

A local cyber security company is now offering help to small businesses that need protection. National Networks Business Relationship Manager Matthew Nichols explained the misconceptions small businesses have quite often.

“A lot of people think I am a small business, no one is going to come after me, right? But 62% of cyberattacks are against small businesses,” Nichols said.

Nichols said a small business is usually a hacker’s main focus when it comes to cyberattacks.

“You have to have someone on your side 24/7 doing the monitoring, doing the scans, looking at those things because even if you have basic things like your firewalls and things like that, if businesses aren’t monitoring them, they don’t know what’s actually going on in that time frame,” he said.

He even gave an example – one business almost lost half a million dollars after hackers compromised an email in the process of a company attempting to make a wire transfer.

“It depends on the small business and a lot of different things. On average again 95% of those attacks are anywhere between $853 and $653,000, so it can cost businesses a lot of money,” Nichols said.

One local business said they are blessed to have not experienced a breach, and that’s because they do things more traditionally. Roy’s Meat Store Manager Andrea explained their process.

“The good thing about us is that we don’t keep anybody’s phone number, anybody’s email or anything on record. Once the card goes through, it closes. They run the card, charge the amount and there’s nothing left in our system,” she said.

Nichols said there can be loopholes, and it’s wise to remain vigilant.

We reached out to the Town of Iowa for information about the cyberattack incident, but the mayor declined an interview today.

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