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13 | O akville B eaver | T hursday,S eptem ber 10,2020 insidehalton.com Overhead Door Co. of Hamilton-Burlington™ Reopening schools safelymatters to everyone That's why the government of Ontario has worked with health officials, school boards and educators to develop a comprehensive plan to keep kids and staff safe. • Physical distancing measures will be implemented such as desk separation, signs, floor markings and one-way hallways. • Face coveringswill be required for staff and students in Grades 4-12. • Hand hygienewill be enabled with hand sanitizer and hand washing. • More nurseswill be in schools. • School cleaningwill be enhanced. Paid for by the Government of Ontario Visit ontario.ca/ReopeningSchools The Canada Revenue Agency computers were re- cently hacked. Those affect- ed are now more vulnera- ble to having money stolen via the internet. This cyberattack was al- so directed at GCKey, which is an online access to many government services. In mid-August, it was re- ported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that 11,200 Canadians had their CRA accounts hacked. Hackers were able to change individuals' bank account information. Plus, the hackers will have ac- cess to passwords. This is significant because many people use the same pass- word for various accounts. This has disaster writ- ten all over it, for two rea- sons. First, because the hack- ers may have created new bank accounts for unsus- pecting Canadians, money potentially could be stolen and because people are not aware that new bank ac- counts exist, they will not be monitored. Second, now that these hackers have some Canadi- ans' passwords, they can go exploring the internet to see what other accounts they can access for the pur- pose of stealing your mon- ey. This should act as a ma- jor warning to all of us to be extra careful in protecting ourselves against hacking and cyber theft. The ability and tenacity of these crooks to hack the CRA computers is mind- boggling. In my opinion, the federal government will use significant resources to attempt to catch those re- sponsible. If they can target the fed- eral government, they cer- tainly could have the ability to target individual Canadi- ans. Dr. Ali Ghorbani, direc- tor of the Canadian Insti- tute for Cybersecurity, sug- gested that anyone who has been hacked should imme- diately change their pass- words for other accounts. If you have not been a target of a cybersecurity breach do not consider yourself lucky. It will likely happen in the future. Ghorbani said that when it comes to cyberattacks, it is not a matter of if but when. Peter Watson, of Watson Investments MBA, CFP®, R.F.P., CIM®, FCSI, offers a weekly financial plan- ning column, "Dollars & Sense." He can be contacted through www.watsonin- vestments.com. OPINION CYBERATTACK PUTS CANADIANS AT RISK HACKED CRA ACCOUNTS LEAVE THOUSANDS OF VICTIMS FINANCIALLY VULNERABLE, WRITES PETER WATSON PETER WATSON Column SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER AT INSIDEHALTON.COM