When you hear that a large school system in Alabama is hit by a ransomware attack, or that a hospital system with facilities all over the state has its digital records stolen by a hacker, no one could blame you for being concerned about your own cybersecurity.

There are things you can do to protect yourself and your digital information, experts say. Some of that just has to do with paying better attention.

“Most of the cases that we see just come from a lack of cyber awareness and due diligence,” said Dr. Travis Atkison, computer science cyber security program director at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

“If people were good cyber citizens and just took that extra second to be wary of emails with a lot of urgency or reached out to someone to say, ‘Hey did you send me this email?’ Attacks like these would decrease drastically,” Atkison said.

There are government agencies and others working to protect institutions and industries that are frequent targets of cyberattacks – educational entities like the Jefferson County School System – which suffered a systemwide shutdown after a ransomware attack recently, or medical institutions such as the Community Health Systems, whose affiliates Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, South Baldwin Regional Medical Center in Foley, and Crestwood Medical Center in Huntsville, were among those recently victimized by a data breach affecting patient records.