Florence County blocks nearly 250,000 cyberattacks in November

FLORENCE COUNTY, SC (WMBF) - Florence County’s digital defenses faced a major challenge in November when nearly 250,000 attempts to breach its data systems were blocked.

Chip Snow, director of information technology for Florence County, said the county’s automated systems successfully prevented the attacks.

“These are reports from the firewall that block any attempts to come into the network. The attacks and prevention are all automated,” Snow said.

The November figure represents a significant increase from the usual 25,000 hacking attempts the county typically sees each month.

Snow said there’s no single reason for the spike.

“I don’t think there is any particular reason other than they’re out there probing all the time, looking for weaknesses and easy targets when they come from lots of different sources,” Snow said.

Meanwhile, a breach potentially affecting thousands who obtained or ran their credit through 700 Credit was reported over the weekend.

Joseph Bodden, an associate professor of cybersecurity at Horry-Georgetown Technical College, stated that the 700 Credit issue was not seasonal but rather based on the company’s infrastructure.

“It was a supply chain attack, actually,” Bodden said. “So with 700 Credit, covers 5.8 million users, and 18,000 dealerships throughout the United States. They have over 200 third-party partners, and one of those partners got breached.”

The breach forced the Department of Consumer Affairs to issue an alert to those affected.

They advise people to be on the lookout for suspicious activity, as personal information could be sold on the dark web.

Experts say it’s a good idea to have credit monitoring services to check information.

If suspicious activity is detected, people are urged to report it right away.

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