DICKINSON — The Bowman City Commission held a regular meeting on Tuesday, June 2, where they confronted the city’s cybersecurity weaknesses and watched a presentation from CyberNet Security about what they can do to be safer. The city commission made decisions on a variety of topics during their meeting such as addressing an application for a zone change, an event request and more. However, the most pressing issue brought before the commission was the cyberattack the Bowman Parks & Recreation faced. ADVERTISEMENT Dan Peterson, the director of the Bowman Parks & Recreation, told the commission about how the recent cyberattack left every file the department had encrypted and inaccessible. The attack had even affected any backup files the department had that were in thumb drives plugged into devices. While there was a message from the attacker with contact information about how to access the files again, Peterson was able to decrypt the files by taking the issue to an expert in Bismarck. “They didn’t take the files… so we got lucky in that regard,” Peterson said. “We had no idea what they wanted.” Peterson explained to the commission that there several measures the Bowman Parks & Recreation could take to be safer from attacks. One of the main ways was having better passwords — Peterson described the department’s passwords as being weak and incorporating predictable phrases. “Our passwords were pathetic,” Peterson said. John Nagel, president of CyberNet Security, gave a presentation over Zoom discussing what services his company could provide to improve the City of Bowman’s cybersecurity. The offer was a three-year plan that would make a multitude of changes that could prevent successful cyberattacks. For example, Nagel explained that the first two years of his roadmap would provide cybersecurity and phishing training to every employee, which involve scoring each