State & Local Government Policy, Business and Technology

Local governments needn’t face ransomware streak alone, experts say

StateScoop: Just hours after Christmas day, the small town of Cornelia, Georgia, suffered a ransomware attack, its fourth cyberattack in the last two years. The incident is part of a worsening trend that experts say is bringing cyberattacks against state and local governments that are increasingly frequent and severe.

The most recent attack on Cornelia, a community with a population of about 4,000 tucked in the northern part of the state, took the city’s administrative software offline, but left a majority of its services unaffected. But this was after the city was hit with a cyberattack in September 2019, prompting the city to spend nearly $30,000 to upgrade its firewall, hoping to prevent yet another incident.

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