Sea-Tac Airport cyberattack: Security experts urge personal protection

Seattle is the top destination this Labor Day weekend, according to AAA. As all of those people fly into town though, they’re dealing with some travel hiccups. It’s a result of last week’s cyberattack at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

On Saturday, though, officials at the airport said more systems are returning to normal. However, flight and bag information displays are still down after the internet outage last weekend.

"Be patient, the people working in the airport are not the criminals here, it’s the cyberterrorists that are the criminals," Peter Avery, Vice President of Security Compliance for Visual Edge 
IT said. It’s a total technology company in which he specializes in cybersecurity. 

"There’s always worry about data exfiltration, whether it be credit card info, personal identifiable information, but it’s almost becoming the new normal unfortunately," Avery said. 

It all boils down to money. "It’s just about getting as much money as you can from low-hanging fruit from networks that aren’t protected or don’t have the right things in place or have a vulnerability that’s recently exposed," Avery said. 

Which is why he told FOX 13, the approach taken to protecting security systems is changing. "The biggest difference between what modern security looks like compared to security even two to three years ago is that it has to be defense in depth, so you’re looking holistic at all your systems, looking for anomalies," Avery said. 

He said artificial intelligence is helping point out those anomalies. "In the past it was all based on vectors of attacks, so you’d have protections for email, protections for desktops, protection for servers, firewalls--but not a lot of great integration," Avery said. 

He adds, if this cyberattack happened at another smaller airport, things could have been a lot different. 

"One of the nice things about Seattle is that they’re so large they can afford some redundancies in their systems. Smaller airports can’t afford those redundancies, Whereas Seattle continues to operate, a lot of smaller airports would have been shut down completely," Avery said. 

So, before you take that next flight, make sure you’re protecting your information. "Definitely use multifactor authentication for everything you can," Avery said.

He also recommends monitoring your credit report, as well as the dark web, freezing your credit, and not using the same password for everything. If you’re headed to the airport, look for the team in green to help you. Aircraft operations are back to normal with minimal delays, according to Sea-Tac Airport.

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