The day after the Marshfield Board of Aldermen heard a presentation on the city’s cybersecurity needs, the City of New Orleans declared a state of emergency as the latest U.S.city to fall victim to a cyber attack.
The regular meeting of the Marshfield Aldermen ended just before 10 p.m.Thursday, and New Orleans, Louisiana, came under attack at 5 a.m.Friday, as reported by NOLA Ready, the state’s emergency preparedness office.
When the attack was detected, all NOLA employees had to power down their computers and disconnect from WiFi, according to media reports.An article published on Forbes noted that city servers were shut down, and employees were ordered to unplug any devices.
Major cyber attacks have been reported elsewhere this year.The State of Louisiana was attacked in November, and Texas was targeted in August.
In March 2018, the City of Atlanta suffered a ransomware cyber attack, meaning that city data was held captive by Iranian hackers using a virus called SamSam.
When a victim’s (in this case, a city’s) network is targeted, its files become encrypted so that they are unreadable, and the hackers demand payment, or ransom, to restore them.(In Atlanta’s case, the foreign hackers demanded six Bitcoin, or about $25,000, which the city did not pay — but Wired magazine reports that recovery from the incident cost the city $2.6 million.)
Cyber attacks are on the rise in cities across the country — and in homes and businesses as well.And as Marshfield’s city leaders are learning, small municipalities are also susceptible.
Scott Jones of Liberty Technical Solutions in Marshfield, the city’s IT provider, was invited to speak to the board about the issue.City Administrator John Benson explained to the board that the first step is an assessment of the city’s existing system.“The assessment is done in relation to our security practices and awareness,” he reported.Benson added that the assessment would also review the city’s processes and policies against the National Institute of Standards and Practices Cybersecurity Framework, as this is the benchmark for security preparedness.
Prior to the meeting, Benson consulted Cyber Defense, a cybersecurity company located in Round Rock, Texas.
The State of Missouri has contracted with Cyber Defense to address ongoing security defenses, he noted — as has the U.S.military.
Benson told the board that both Cyber Defense and Liberty Technical Solutions recommended an assessment as the first step.After that, recommended security measures can be put into place.
“There’s really two aspects of cybersecurity,” Jones told the board.”One is social engineering and one is technical.”
Social engineering refers to the need to train staff in recognizing security concerns, while technical solutions include antivirus, anti-spyware and anti-malware software, as well as secure backups.
According to Jones, the city’s most recent assessment found that Marshfield was not highly exposed, and it did have a backup device, so city leaders felt that they were relatively protected.
But Jones said he has learned a lot since that assessment.
According to Jones, an employee may click on an email and a bot can invade a server, where it can sit dormant for 192 days learning the network, the location of files and more.
“When it attacks, it’s thorough.It hits your backups, hits your workstation — it does everything it can to try to circumvent protections you have in place.”
In a crypto attack, Jones noted, the virus can rewrite files so that even the oldest version stored in the cloud is encrypted.
“The attacks are getting more sophisticated, so the solutions are getting more sophisticated,” Jones said.
The issue comes down to risk tolerance, Jones told the board.He compared it to homeownership.Do you lock the door? Or do you add padlocks, guard dogs, metal gates, etc.? “Risk tolerance is something that you’ll want to talk about,” he said.
The board expressed consensus for the city staff to craft a request for qualifications/proposals for a cybersecurity analysis, and at the suggestion of Alderman Rob Foster, the city will also examine insurance options for coverage in cyber attacks.
The city does have cybersecurity coverage in its policy, and city Finance Director Monica Robinson said that Marshfield was reimbursed for a previous incident.
Mayor Robert Williams noted that a wide view is needed.”So far we’re focusing our attention on people getting access to our system, but we are also a customer service organization,” he said.“That’s an area we need to also address … we need to make sure we protect our customers.”.
