SAN ANTONIO — The military conflict between Iran and U.S. appeared to be deescalating Wednesday, after president Donald Trump's address to the nation.
"I'm pleased to inform you, the American people should be extremely grateful and happy. No Americans were harmed in last night's attack by the Iranian regime," the president Wednesday. "We suffered no casualties, all of our soldiers are safe and only minimal damage was sustained at our military bases."
Amid uncertainty over the next steps, cyber attacks loom as a potential threat.
Governor Gregg Abbott is asking Texans to remain on alert. Tuesday, he made remarks at a meeting with his Domestic Terrorism Task Force. According to the Texas Department of Information Resources, Abbott says Iran has been targeting state agencies with roughly 10,000 attempted attacks per minute.
A DIR spokesperson tells KENS 5 these types of attempts happen on a daily basis. It originates from domestic and foreign locations.
"DIR remains vigilant in its cybersecurity posture and encourages governmental entities, and all Texans, to engage in cyber security best practices," said Christi Koenig Brisky, DIR spokesperson.
Just last year, hackers organized a coordinated ransomware attack in Texas. 23 small, local government entities' computer systems were dismantled. On Wednesday, Mayor Ron Nirenberg addressed the ongoing Iran conflict and potential threat. He says there is no abnormal activity in the city at this time.
"San Antonio has increased our cyber status to high and leadership continues to monitor all networks, email activity," said Nirenberg. "Just know that we are using every resource available to our disposal to keep our community safe from any cyber incident."
A vulnerable area for cyber attacks is within the financial sector. KENS 5 spoke with Jefferson Bank's chief information security officer, Roman Medina, about the potential impact. He cited one federal case several years ago, that demonstrated the nation's vulnerability.
"Iranian nationals were convicted where they performed distributed service attacks against U.S. banks. They flooded those banks with enough internet traffic where it made it hard for consumers to access those resources. You couldn't get access to do your online banking or request other banking services," said Medina.
Critical Start, a Texas-based company that helps protect agencies from data breaches, says hackers are becoming more sophisticated. Jordan Mauriello, senior vice president of managed services, said critical infrastructure is targeted to inflict damage to the country.
But he warns that everyone should be wary, including small businesses.
"There is really no out of bounds business that exists today for this kind of activity. So, even if you are a small (or) medium business, you need to be asking yourself, what's your exposure? What kind of threats should you be worried about and how should you protect yourself?" he said. "Disruption of economy is a very real tactic to be played out here."
The FBI of San Antonio says it is constantly monitoring the area and sent us a statement:
"San Antonio FBI is always on guard for potential threats to our community and we are working with our law enforcement partners and staying in close contact with FBI Headquarters to assess any threats to our area. While there is no specific and credible threat to this area at this time, we urge the public to be vigilant and report any suspicious activity to law enforcement."
The FBI says citizens can take measures to protect themselves. For more information, click here.