Security News > 2021 > February > U.S. municipalities are the perfect target for cybercriminals in 2021

Over the last year, I've spoken with state IT teams throughout the U.S., and discovered that, while states responded effectively by enabling the move to a virtual working environment, the race to establish remote operations has exposed huge cybersecurity vulnerabilities within local municipalities: the struggle for adequate funding, the challenges in attracting skilled IT workers, and the widening cyber threat landscape are pushing municipalities to the brink.

In the last year, RDP attacks increased by over 768%. For cybercriminals looking for vulnerable targets, local governments and municipalities with lax remote work security protocols are perfect targets for ransomware and other malicious actions.

Just 40% of state CISOs feel somewhat confident that their state information assets are adequately protected from cyberattacks targeting local government and public higher education entities.

According to the same study, only 28% of states reported that they had collaborated extensively with local governments as part of their state's security program during the past year, with 65% reporting only limited collaboration.

Instead of each state trying to come up with their own framework, State governments need to rapidly adopt general industry frameworks such as NIST 800 and provide much-needed resources and manpower to update the IT frameworks and systems used by municipalities and local Governments.

It is my opinion that unless local municipalities are given both the resources to invest in secure IT infrastructure solutions as well as clear guidelines from states mandating general industry frameworks, we will see the number of cyber intrusion incidents such as what happened in Oldsmar dramatically increase over the next year.

News URL

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HelpNetSecurity/~3/nBliLSpJnx0/