Cybersecurity and Local Government

Local governments worldwide provide essential public services to their residents and visitors. Consider the following services and their importance to the daily lives of everyone involved: public safety (police and fire), court systems, election systems, emergency medical services, water provision and wastewater management, and emergency and disaster management. Disrupting any of these services or shutting them down altogether would produce serious consequences for local governments and the people who depend on them. Collectively, these governments gather, utilize and store large volumes of sensitive information, especially personally identifiable information such as names, addresses, drivers license numbers, credit card numbers, social security numbers and medical information. Such information is valuable to cybercriminals, and obtaining it is often the purpose of cyberattacks. However, recent high-profile cases suggest that local governments are poorly equipped to respond to these attacks. This book seeks to educate and inform top local government officials, department heads and staff, as well as interested residents, of the major issues they encounter as they endeavor to provide high levels of cybersecurity; the cybersecurity challenges these governments face; and how best to meet these challenges.