A recent report called ‘The Economic Impact of Cyber Attacks on Municipalities’ published by KnowBe4 states that the US state and local government agencies are struggling to keep up with the cyber attacks.
KnowBe4, which is into the business of Cybersecurity, has revealed that attacks cause massive economic impacts that can be broken into 5 parts- denial of digital service to citizens causing financial loss, causing financial loss to state and local governments, increase in the frequency of recurring attacks, the change of allocating budget to thwart such attacks in future through proper tools and leading to disinterest in economic investments in municipalities.
As per the report, the estimated costs incurred due to ransomware attacks on Municipalities for the year 2017-2018 were $125,697 approximately, causing severe disruptions to companies operating in the healthcare and law enforcement sector.
“This is because state and local governments often operate with tight budgets and so cannot afford to pay for a ransomware incident”, said Stu Sjouwerman, the CEO of KnowBe4.
Furthermore, the KnowBe4 report states that the awareness level among government officials when it comes to Cybersecurity is only 0.48% as most of the elected councilors and commissioners are unaware of measures to be taken while dealing with a cyber incident.
KnowBe4 report states that municipalities are struggling to keep up the pace with the increase in cyber attacks as they are finding it hard to thwart the sophistication used by the hackers – as the impact scale is going well beyond financial implications.
