On Your Side: Customer advice following DISH cyberattack

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) - We’ve heard from many of you about the Dish cyber security incident. Viewers tell On Your Side they’ve had trouble getting into their accounts and paying their bill.

Ransomware is to blame for an ongoing outage for the satellite television provider. It affected the website, apps, and customer support systems.

“They just logged in as an employee,” said Shannon McMurtrey, Associate Professor of Cyber-Risk Management at Drury University. “So businesses need to have good cyber hygiene. They need to take care of their cyber security practices internally.”

Cyber security experts say hackers are organized, and expect more attacks.

“These breaches have turned into a successful business model that you now have businesses that specialize in ransomware. They offer ransomware as a service,” said McMurtrey.

Consumer experts say to assume your information is compromised. Check your accounts every day. If you see something odd, report it.

“If you report that immediately to your credit card company or your bank, you’re not typically going to be liable if it’s fraud related,” said Pamela Hernandez with Better Business Bureau.

Get a credit monitoring service. If you do not plan to make any big purchases in the near future, like a car or a home, consider freezing your credit. This prevents anyone from opening a line of credit in your name. Finally, protect your passwords.

“Turn on multi-factor authentication. If you can use multi-factor authentication on a website, I don’t care if it’s Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook any place that offers that, turn that on. You can assume your password is out there somewhere and if you are reusing a password on another website, it’s going to get compromised,” said McMurtrey.

On its website, Dish says it will take time before everything is fully restored.

Customers should be able to pay their bills now. This is just another reason to always use a credit card for subscription services. Credit cards usually have better protections than debit cards.

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