Resilience Against Ransomware
When looking at local government specifically, mitigating ransomware attacks often is the top goal of boosting cyber resilience. In 2019, New Orleans and Lodi, Calif., both suffered ransomware attacks, and they both learned a great deal about resilience in the aftermath of those attacks. The FBI reports that $12.5 billion was lost to ransomware attacks in the U.S. alone in 2023.
In its 2024 report on ransomware, Sophos observed that state and local governments have increased their resilience to attacks in the past year. Among various industries, state and local governments saw the “lowest frequency of attack,” with 34 percent hit by ransomware in 2023. But agencies reported “the highest rate of data encryption” after an attack, with 98 percent of attacks encrypting data, according to Sophos.
Ransomware attacks targeting state and local governments may be down in Sophos’ survey partly because governments are limited as to what they can pay bad actors. But the consequences of a successful attack still remain serious. In addition to primary systems, aggressive attacks have attempted to damage backup systems as well, Sophos notes. This reality reminds officials not to rely too heavily on one solution, and that a holistic approach to cyber resilience wins the day.
