It’s not easy being a geek.
Your local government information technology professional may not be sleeping well every night.
Together, these men and women form an embattled army, forever trying to keep at bay canny and invisible cyber criminals and their ever-changing tricks.
“The wolf is always at the door,” Roanoke County IT Director Bill Hunter said. “If you block one thing, they’re coming after you with another.”
These days, the wolf is a kidnapper, looking to take your city, county or town government hostage. Not the people, but the data — your data.
Local governments — from major cities to tiny hamlets — are the newest targets of an older form of cyberattack: ransomware. Hackers sneak malware into a network and seize control of a government’s computer network and encrypt it and all its data, locking the system’s owners out of it — until they pay a ransom.
And the price is going up.
Hackers are targeting local governments because limited resources make them more vulnerable than corporations, they hold rich troves of data, including on taxpayers, and now that most governments carry insurance policies covering…
