The Broward County Public School (BCPS) District is in the process of notifying about 50,000 people that a ransomware attack earlier this year resulted in unauthorized access to some district systems that may have potentially included the sensitive information of some faculty staff and students.
Human risk and error still represent the most significant cyber breach vectors, and with the dispersion of user-device network endpoints away from traditional networks during the coronavirus pandemic, those two vectors are only becoming more challenging to address, state and local government officials said during a Nov. 22 GovTech webinar.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has launched its Infrastructure Dependency Primer (IDP) learning tool, which aims to help state, local, tribal, and territorial planners and decisionmakers better understand how infrastructure dependencies can impact their communities and how to increase resilience.
Senior IT officials from Texas and Pennsylvania agreed this week at the Route Fifty Tech Summit that the key to success in meeting cybersecurity challenges is collaboration among all the governmental entities – Federal, state and local – along with their vendor partners.
In the wake of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report encouraging the Departments of Education and Homeland Security (DHS) to update K-12 cybersecurity guidance, several Democrat senators have written to both agencies urging them to heed GAO’s recommendations, and establish critical infrastructure council structures to advance the issue.
With K-12 educational institutions increasingly targeted by ransomware and other cyber attacks during the coronavirus pandemic, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is pushing the Department of Education to update its plans – which currently date from 2010 – for addressing cyber risks faced by schools.
Guidance published by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB) advises that higher education governing boards should stay appraised of rising cybersecurity threats, and fund efforts to address them.
After more than two months of angling and dealmaking, the House of Representatives voted to approve the $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act – also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework – on November 5, sending the bill along with its $2 billion in cyber funding and $65 billion in broadband appropriations to President Biden’s desk for final approval.
The cybersecurity threats that have prompted wide-scale action to improve security across the Federal government are posing equal dangers to state and local governments, and officials said at FCW’s CDM Summit virtual event on November 4 that the same solutions being put into place by the Feds also are scalable and adaptable by state and local governments.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has released Cal-Secure, the state’s first multi-year cybersecurity roadmap. In a press release, Gov. Newsom’s office said Cal-Secure is built on industry-leading best practices and frameworks, and addresses critical gaps in the state’s information and cybersecurity programs while enabling the state to manage existing and future threats more effectively.
