Palm Coast IT Spam Test Sparks Over Use of Vaccine Status as Bait

An email sent by the City of Palm Coast IT department last week raises concern because of the nature of its text. Sent to employees to mimic the type of junk mail they might receive with malware or viruses, the purpose of the message was to see which employees were willing to open real spam and therefore open the city to cybersecurity risks. .

The problem? The email contained a request to find out whether city workers had received a COVID-19 vaccine. He told employees Flagler County instituted a new requirement for government employees to be vaccinated and gave them a link to complete an electronic form. If it came from a spammer, this is how a virus is transmitted to a computer in the city.

Since news of the content of the test email broke, many have opposed the use of COVID vaccinations as a topic to get employees to engage. One of those objections came from Ed Danko, a Palm Coast city councilor first elected in November 2020.

“Under the circumstances and the current environment, this is in my opinion an unacceptable test from our IT department” Danko told Interim City Manager Denise Bevan in an email communication. “Using the county as an excuse makes the situation even worse. There are much better ways to conduct a phishing test than using the COVID vaccination requirements as an excuse. This ill-advised exercise only adds to the public’s lack of confidence in government. “

The email also appeared at a meeting Monday of the Flagler County Commissioners Council. The board was concerned that the county government was invoked in the email prompt without prior notification, effectively putting the county on the path of a backlash without its consent.

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Doug Akins, IT director for Palm Coast, was behind the email function. It was effective, he said, in providing employees with a topic that sparked engagement. “The goal is to help us understand where we may need to do a better job of training employees on how to recognize when an email may be a phishing or virus attempt,” Akins said in a press release published in the Palm Coast Observer.

“Obviously, using the Covid vaccination was a bad choice for a computer test given the political divisions over vaccinations and mask mandates”, Danko told AskFlagler, developing his initial reaction. “Now is not the right time. This is the wrong place. This is the bad state. The government does not have to request this type of personal information from Palm Coast.