A ransomware attack crippled nearly half the East Coast’s fuel supply in May, highlighting how vulnerable critical infrastructure is to online attacks.

Oklahoma State University’s Dr. Johnson Thomas is available as an expert source for media outlets looking to explain how cyberattacks are launched and approaches to mitigate the effects of these attacks.

“Ransomware — a type of malicious software that encrypts a victim’s files and only releases the cryptographic key once a ransom is paid — has emerged as a potentially devastating class of cybercrimes in the past few years,” Thomas said. “The attacker usually demands that the ransom be paid in cryptocurrency to prevent them from being traced back and identified. Payment of the ransom does not guarantee that the files will be decrypted.”