Bowman City Commission confronts local cybersecurity weaknesses – The Dickinson Press
Bowman City Commission confronts local cybersecurity weaknesses – The Dickinson Press
Publish Date: 2026-06-03 19:29:00
Source Domain: www.thedickinsonpress.com
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.
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.”
John Nagel, president of CyberNet Security, gave a presentation over Zoom discussing services to improve the City of Bowman’s cybersecurity.
Dorvall Bedford / The Dickinson Press
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…
