2019 was a tough year for the overall cybersecurity of state and local governments and municipal institutions. If you follow security news, there were times when not a week would go by without word of how the latest municipal cyberattacks impeded or even halted day-to-day operations.
This stream of recent hacking incidents targeting government and municipal institutions is developing into a tide — libraries, courthouses, schools, hospitals and government service agencies are all susceptible to attacks. In some cases, the consequences were arguably minimal. In others, they were much more severe. Generally speaking, the severity depends on which types of data each institution holds.
Often, the best initial strategy for preventing cyberattacks is to review what happened to others and derive lessons from those accounts. How do these attacks apply to other organizations or municipalities, and what can security professionals in these places do differently to avoid such attacks?
What Kinds of Public Sector Institutions Are Being Attacked?
To see what lessons we can learn from municipal cyberattacks, I’m highlighting several recent hacking incidents here followed by a few general strategies that organizations can put in place today to improve cybersecurity.
Hospitals and Healthcare Facilities
In April 2017, the Erie County Medical Center in New York was hit with a ransomware attack. Despite hackers’ demands for $30,000, the ultimate cost to the hospital came closer to $10 million because the intrusion crippled 6,000 computers, which forced the hospital to revert to paper and old-school methods. Subsequently, the hospital estimated that they would need to upgrade their ..
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