JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – While a cyberattack in Jacksonville Beach may be surprising, what is also surprising is the number of attempts by hackers to break into JEA’s electric and water supply. News4JAX has learned there have been close to 900,000 attempts in just one day to try and break into JEA computers.
Brad Krol, Chief Information Officer at JEA, showed us the monitors at the emergency operations center. On them, we saw the number of times people tried to log into the JEA system, and failed. We also got to see the number of attacks that have been stopped.
READ: White House letter to governors warning about cyberattacks
“This give you a perspective of what the attack origins of these potential threats that were thwarted. So, it’s constant, computers trying to hack into utility systems,” Krol said.
We checked with JEA after we read a letter to state governors from the White House, sending out a warning about attacks to water systems from Iranian and Chinese groups.
“There’s always threats within the internet today, and with people trying to infiltrate systems. And so, it’s a responsibility of all organizations, including JEA to keep apprised of the threats that are out there to keep the organization safe,” Krol said.
JEA has invested a lot into cyber security. And, it works with multiple agencies to learn about the current threats and respond before they become a problem. So far, successfully. Not only are they protecting the utility, but your personal information that they have on file.