A global cyber attack that happened over the weekend has local companies on high alert, especially Lansing Board of Water and Light.
Last year BWL got hit hard by a virus that rapidly spread through their computer system through email. With help from law enforcement and tech experts, they were able to contain the virus.
They have not been hit by the recent cyber attack, but BWL's General Manager said they are on high alert.
He said they've put new measures in place that would allow them to recover faster. It took them about a week to recover from the last hit, and he said they had to do a lot of things manually in the system to get their corporate network back on track.
"It was more of our accounting an email system, telephone system that was more problematic during this attack,"Dick Peffley said.
Cyber security expert, Dr. Richard Enbody, said the reason why we're seeing more of these attacks is because bitcoin makes it harder to track the people who steal the information from the network.
Hackers go after large companies like BWL because they believe they can get more money in return.
"With anything, if you go after an individual, you're only gonna get a little bit of money, but if you go after an institution, you're gonna get more money out of them because their system is worth more than yours," he said.
He said the best thing a company can do is have backups. Save the information on a disks outside of the network.
