BATON ROUGE - In the past month, many Baton Rouge residents received notice of their data being breached. 

One of these breaches includes the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office hack that exposed many highly-confidential employee documents on the dark web. Just days before, it was announced that a data breach at AT&T released over 70 million former and current user's information such as social security number, pin-codes and email addresses.

The Department of Homeland Security suggests using fraud protection software whether or not you were affected by the breach. They say it should be installed on any machine that connects to the internet.

"What it does is it protects you because it either blocks the bad actors from using that social security to sign up for a loan or do other things but, unfortunately, once information is out on the web, it's going to remain out on the web," Eric Romero, the Department of Homeland Security's Director of Information Technology, said.

Romero says alongside fraud protection, users should also create long passwords and change them frequently, and set-up multi-factor authentication on devices.

"It's an inconvenience because we have to put all of that stuff in play, but at the end of the day, we're in a much more secure environment," he said.

While these hackers have many avenues of getting information, Romero says the biggest threat right now is phishing emails.

"They have gotten really good at crafting the email, where it looks like a legitimate source. Somebody that maybe you're familiar with so you tend to see it and say, I know this person. You click on the link and now something has been installed on your computer," Romero said.

Romero suggests that companies train employees about cyber-security and what to look out for.

"It's truly a community approach. I can do my best to secure the City Parish network, but we want to make sure that the large industries are doing their part and the mom-and-pop organizations are doing their part because they are the ones that can be severely impacted."

To see if you have been affected by a breach, you can click here. For more information on cyber security or to report a cyber issue, click here.