Soft Targets Create Hard Issues

One of my favorite things in the world is ambient energy.

Walking into the airport during the full swing of the summer travel season is one of my favorite things in the world, even as a frequent traveler. Same thing when we head up to Oshkosh for EAA and the energy surrounding the grounds.

The crowds, the noise, the energy, the emotion, the planes, I love it.

I’m a little concerned this year as travel season has begun because we have a new challenge in our midst from ransomware that take our bustling airports and can shut them down with just a few clicks of a button. 

Cleveland and Louisville airports both got hit this spring in the span of less than a month. After hackers gained control of their systems, they made demands for cash and threatened to cause chaos. Neither attack was successful in getting money, but they were successful in creating some massive headaches for the airports.

All the challenges with funding and a reluctance to adopt new technology has left many of our airports vulnerable to ransomware attacks. The hackers understand this and as we’ve seen, they’re now exploiting it. And once they have access, it's hard to get them out. 

Municipal governments across the nation have been reluctant to adopt Cloud storage of information compared to internal servers. But if you read the story in this issue looking at revenue management software, you’ll learn the benefits of adopting the Cloud now and how you can protect your data from the scourge of digital pirates looking to harm your operations.

Federal funding levels also need to meet the needs of our airports to make sure they can secure data and operations. Without the proper technology in place and strong security systems guarding Wi-Fi, airports will continue to be a bucket of soft targets for hackers.

Luckily the attacks haven’t hindered systems controlling air traffic or other operations that could put massive amounts of lives at risk. But it’s times to address these security failings now before we see some major damage done.