Several U.S. municipalities reported cyber incidents this week, disrupting key public services.
In Texas, Kaufman County (just outside Dallas) said a cyberattack discovered Monday took down multiple county systems. A local news outlet reported that courthouse computers were among those affected.
In La Vergne, Tennessee, officials are investigating a network intrusion that shut down city operations.
Since the attack was detected on Friday, government offices have remained closed, online payment systems for water bills and property taxes have been taken offline, and court hearings have been postponed.
And in Indiana, Dekalb County disclosed last month that a cyber incident left parts of its government network offline for more than a week, preventing some employees from logging into their workstations.
Damon Small, Board of Directors, at Xcape Inc, said cyberattacks targeting these counties prove that U.S. local governments are vulnerable to these sorts of attacks.
“These incidents went beyond simple IT disruptions, crippling vital public services. Courts shut down, utility payments failed, and courthouse operations were affected.”
He added: “The scope and duration of these outages show that municipal cybersecurity failures are no longer isolated incidents. They directly threaten essential civic functions and local economies. Because of the impact on courts, taxes, and county services, local government networks are critical infrastructure that desperately needs more robust defenses.”
When city halls go dark, trust and revenue go with them. Build for outages before attackers build them for you,” Small concluded.
Information Security Buzz News Editor
Kirsten Doyle has been in the technology journalism and editing space for nearly 24 years, during which time she has developed a great love for all aspects of technology, as well as words themselves. Her experience spans B2B tech, with a lot of focus on cybersecurity, cloud, enterprise, digital transformation, and data centre. Her specialties are in news, thought leadership, features, white papers, and PR writing, and she is an experienced editor for both print and online publications.
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