How Municipal Governments could protect against ransomware

As more and more cases regarding Municipalities being hit by ransomware are emerging day to day, Deloitte has come up with a to-do list that could help Municipalities safeguard their IT infrastructure from ransomware attacks. And they are as follows-

 

• Keeping data in the dispersed form is a great move as it disallows ransomware spreading hackers from getting hold of data.

 

• Imposing critical policies such as playing games and checking personal emails on critical hardware like servers will be a good move

 

• Going for reliable backups which can be used for data continuity do helps

 

• Creating awareness among employees on the current Cybersecurity landscape do help

 

• Conducting war game exercises to simulate ransomware attacks helps

 

• Patching of systems with updates promptly do helps

 

• Sharing information on a common platform helps other organizations from getting into ransomware troubles

 

• Disabling extraneous services on the server helps in getting rid of opportunities for a possible attack.

 

• Having a cyber insurance policy might help in scenarios. If in case it covers the ransom payment. But this might turn as an incentive for hackers to launch more such future attacks on cities.

 

Note – According to a Deloitte report, the year 2019 witnessed over 163 ransomware attacks on government organizations which is a nearly 150% increase from 2018. Experts estimated that the victims could have paid around $1.8 million to hackers in the form of ransom to recover their data.

The post How Municipal Governments could protect against ransomware appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.

March 12, 2020 at 10:32AM

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