Board of Aldermen 05-28-2019 Page 2
But there is phishing training, in other words, IT puts out phishing e-mails to our employees to make
sure that they don’t respond and if they do respond to a suspicious e-mail that we, the City, creates, they
are then asked to undergo more training regarding how to detect suspicious e-mails.
We get regular Homeland Security updates. Bruce Codagnone is part of the Cyber Security Sub-
Committee of the State IT Department, where he gets a lot of information there. So given that this has
been in the news, given that this is a threat, we are taking many actions to make sure or try to minimize
any risk that the City of Nashua faces. As Mr. Codagnone reminds me when we discuss this, there are
never any guarantees; you just don’t know what is going to happen. All you can do is to act diligently to
reduce any risks. There are constant malware attacks going on; much of it is diverted. As | understand
it, a day doesn’t go by where this is not someone trying to do something with a system like ours. If you
did want to hear more about this as a Board or in one of the Committees of course we could set this up.
It might be an issue of concern so | wanted to at least reassure you that many steps are being taken to
combat the risk.
Finally we have a couple of Ward meetings, Ward 7 and Ward 3. I’ve been holding these for four years
now in every Ward; a great opportunity for us to hear from constituents and vice versa. We often do
presentations regarding things that are going on with the City. | want to thank all of the Aldermen who
have attended so far. | think it is very helpful to have members of the Board attend. | think at Ward 3 we
had Alderwoman Wilshire, Alderwoman Klee, Alderman Dowd and at Ward 7 we had of course
Alderwoman Caron and | believe Alderwoman Wilshire and maybe somebody else. | forget exactly who
attended but that is a great help and I’ve always encouraged the Aldermen to come. We've also had
some of our State Reps come, and that is helpful too because we are all working as a team; Aldermen,
State Reps, sometimes the State Senators attend, sometimes even our Executive Counselor Debora
Pignatelli to work as a team and to advance Nashua’s interests and to make progress for our
community. So thank you all for coming and there is an open invitation to anybody on the Board of
Aldermen who wants to attend any of these Ward Meetings. The next one is in Ward 2 on Tuesday and
hopefully you will be able to attend when you are available and learn from our citizens.
In any event, that’s all | have Madam President unless there are any questions.
President Wilshire
| am just going to just note for the record that Alderman Laws and Alderman Clemons have joined us
during the Mayor’s comments.
RESPONSE TO REMARKS OF THE MAYOR
Alderman Lopez
| definitely would be interested in attending a presentation by IT over the security methods that we use.
I’m kind of curious, since we have at least half a dozen different data bases, some of which are
obsolete, some of which are not, some of which talk to each other exactly whether that makes it more
secure because phishing can’t figure out which one into. Or whether there is a need to invest in
upgrades or more collaboration so | would definitely like to hear about that.
Alderman Klee
| guess I’m going to do a me too moment but yes | would like to also do that. As far as our City doing
phishing, I'll be honest with you, | received an e-mail that was, | thought it was from the Historic
Commission that I’m on. It said to open up the, it was the blue prints of something on Concord Street. It
looked legitimate, | looked at it, it said NashuaNH.gov, opened it up and it was one of those that caught.
So | would love to be able to ask Mr. Codagnone and so on when can we and when can’t we. I’ve done
all the things of checking it and | went through the little extra training.
