Ransomware, Computer Attacks Can Devastate Small Governments

Cyber attacks can pose a threat to many small cities and local governments in the form of ransomware.

Lee Lawson serves as the It Administrator for the City of Crossville. He said inattentiveness by municipalities can lead to hackers holding valuable information hostage.

“A lot of the situations would be emails, people not paying attention to where the emails are coming from,” Lawson said, “or maybe some of the links that are in the email that could take them to a malicious site. A person could also go to a website that’s infected with some malware.”

Officials in Riviera Beach, Florida paid hackers $600,000 in Bitcoin after computers were rendered useless during a cyber-attack earlier this month.

Lawson said ransom attacks can have a major toll on smaller cities and municipalities.

“It can be quite devastating financially and then you’ve got your reputation that’s kind of harmed afterwards, too,” Lawson said. “It takes a while to rebuild that.”

Lawson said Crossville’s IT officials are constantly on alert for potential threats to the city and its operations.

“We’re constantly monitoring the input and output of data [and] we’re constantly monitoring data,” Lawson said. “We have devices that prevent threats and are always keeping software up to date and patching the operating systems. Just keeping an eye out and educating the end user. That’s the biggest thing there is to keep the user educated about the threats that are out there.”

The city of Spring Hill, just south of Nashville, suffered a 10-day ransomware attack in 2017 in which hackers demanded $250,000 to unlock computer systems.