20 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • OCTOBER 2019
PRESS BUSINESS
LI CYBER-SECURITY FIRMS FIGHT HACKERS
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He is talking about the hacking of
computers at companies across LI
and the nation, which began about
a dozen years ago on a relatively
small scale, and has in the last few
years mushroomed, and spread to
ransomware — the shutting down of
computer systems at municipalities
and school districts. Money must be
paid before they are turned back on
again.
“To me,” Eisenstein says, “the hacking
problem is a war against the American
public.”
How bad is the problem? A recent
report from the National Initiative
for Cybersecurity Education at the
U.S. Department of Commerce says
there are now openings for 313,735
people to detect and defeat hackers.
By 2022, that number will soar to 1.8
million, according to a 2017 Global Information
Security Workforce Study.
Despite the growing need, according
to industry insiders, there are only
about six companies on the Island
fully engaged in anti-cyber hacking.
These are companies that have developed
their own software devices
to deal with increasingly complex
hacking by nations such as Russia,
China, Syria, and North Korea, carried
out by professional cybergangs
based in this country and around the
world and young people who like to
see how far they can get breaking into
a computer system.
Atlas Cybersecurity in Great Neck is
one of those companies, co-founded
in 2017 by Benjamin Dynkin, a lawyer,
and his brother, Barry, a legal
researcher.
The Atlas office on the fourth floor of
a nondescript building on Northern
Boulevard is staffed 24/7 by a team of
about a dozen experts who monitor
the computer systems of the company’s
mostly midsized clients for “suspicious
activity,” Benjamin Dynkin,
Securing against the threat of being hacked is increasingly a cost of doing business. (Getty Images)
25, says. Some of his team members
spent a week aboard a client’s boat
in the Atlantic Ocean. They detected
that some of the boat’s 30 computers
were under attack by hackers. They
informed the client and secured the
systems. The point, Dynkin says, is
that cyber hackers know no boundaries,
on land or on sea.
“The problems are getting worse
because we are all becoming more
connected,” says Dynkin, explaining
that the more devices that are linked
to one another — like a refrigerator
to a home computer system — the
greater the chance of crashes because
of overloads of info, and the more
openings for hackers to crack into
systems.
The recent major hacks in the U.S. are
well known: They include the city of
Baltimore, 22 small towns across
Texas, big banks, and credit card
companies. A major change, industry
experts say, is the demand for money,
known as ransomware.
On Long Island, some of the better
known targets: The Rockville Centre
School District paid almost $100,000
to have its data put back online. The
district said it had no choice but to pay.
The Mineola Union Free School District
was also hacked, but did not pay
ransom, as it was able to restore files
from backups.
Three Commack High School
students were arrested after they
allegedly broke into the school’s system
and changed students’ grades and
schedules.
“There’s just not enough companies
on Long Island or elsewhere to mitigate
the attacks,” says Lee Noriega, a
co-founder of Skout Cybersecurity in
Melville, a company formed in 2013.
Noriega said many small businesses
feel they are not profitable enough to
be hacked. But, he said, 60 percent of
all cyberattacks in the U.S. are against
small and midsized businesses.
The New York Institute of Technology
in Old Westbury is one of only three
schools in the region offering courses
in anti-hacking, says Dr. Michael
Nizich, director of NYIT’s Entrepreneurship
and Technology Innovation
Center. NYIT, Pace University and
NYU are officially certified by the
National Security Agency and the
Homeland Security Department to
offer such courses. The three are
among some 220 across the country
also similarly certified.
More companies and qualified people
will be moving into the field in the
next few years, says Nizich, who is
optimistic about an eventual solution.
He uses an example of gas lights in the
1800s. There were not enough people
to light the gas lamps on the streets,
he says. Ultimately, along came the
light bulb.
“There’s a clear path of history that
says this doesn’t go on forever,”
Nizich says.
“The hacking problem is a war against the
American public,” says Ed Eisenstein.
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