Four Lakes
CRIME & SAFETY
Three fires in the Spokane area on Mother's Day keep firefighters busy
SPOKANE, Wash. - Three different fires in Spokane broke out on Mother's Day keeping firefighters busy all day. The first fire broke out at Fairview Assisted Living at 1617 North Calispel Street where firefighters discovered a resident intentionally setting fires. The call came from five different alarm activations around 6:20...
Spokane Fire Department searches for source of smoke in Washington Trust building
SPOKANE, Wash. – The Spokane Fire Department searched for the source of smoke on the top floor of the downtown Washington Trust building on Tuesday night. According to the department, firefighters were still looking for the source of the smoke, but no extreme heat or flames were visible as of 10pm.
Overnight apartment fire injures two and destroys six units in Spokane Valley
SPOKANE VALLEY, Wash. — Two people were injured overnight, one critically after a fire tore through apartments in Spokane Valley. The Spokane Valley Fire Department says the fire burned through six units in the E Building of Aspen Village Apartments in the 15000 block of East 4th Avenue. Firefighters...
Person injured after car crash in Mead
MEAD, Wash. — A person is injured after a crash on West Francis Avenue Sunday morning. According to a Facebook post from Spokane County Fire District 9, their crew responded to the car crash and had to remove a smashed car door to get to the driver. The patient...
Hackers targeting Spokane businesses
New tech trend shows cybercriminals try to hack Spokane businesses. SPOKANE, Wash – IT experts in the region are warning Spokane business owners about an alarming new tech trend that has exploded in the last six months: cybercriminals are hacking local businesses.Wil Buchanan, the CEO of Philantech3, an IT services company, works with 42 businesses in the region and says times are changing, and AI is the catalyst, "in the past, it was always too expensive to attack small Spokane companies with an AI that no longer is the case."Buchanan shared data with NonStopLocal that showed by 2027, worldwide cyber attacks could cost companies close to $24 trillion."As long as the money is there, they are going to keep adapting and adopting new technologies, including AI," said Buchanan. He added that there is a low-cost but lucrative trend called 'hacking as a service, ' and mid-size companies with 250-350 employees could face up to 1500 cyber attacks per week."They just pay a very small amount of money to buy the tools and basically go to business."Buchanan said hackers are executing more sophisticated tactics. " What we're seeing now is that the email attacks are coming out at legitimate email addresses that you already know and do business with."According to Buchanan, cybercriminals take two approaches: rerouting money to different accounts and stealing money. The largest he has seen is $300,000, but luckily, the company's bank flagged this: " If that transfer had gone through, it would have bankrupted the organization."The second is holding the company's data for ransom, "if you don't have a solid backup and recovery system, you have to pay that hacker, and so you might pay them $50,000,$60,000, $70,000 or more to unlock your data so you can do business again."He recommended regularly updating software, practicing strong authentication, and maintaining security hygiene to prevent this from happening."It used to be that if an organization had a good firewall, maybe some antivirus on each computer, you'd be safe. That's not the case anymore."He said an equally important component to keeping your business safe is training your employees to look for red flags like Urgency to wire money or questing for routing numbers to be changed. "We feel like it's irresponsible in today's business and threat landscape not to really take steps to protect your assets and just your ability to do business."
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