Cybersecurity Challenges to American Local Governments

In this paper we examine data from the first ever nationwide survey of cybersecurity among American local governments. We are particularly interested in understanding the threats to local government cybersecurity, their level of preparedness to address the threats, the barriers these governments encounter when deploying cybersecurity, the policies, tools and practices that they employ to improve cybersecurity and, finally, the extent of awareness of and support for high levels of cybersecurity within their organizations. We found that local governments are under fairly constant cyberattack and are periodically breached. They are not especially well prepared to prevent cyberattacks or to recover when breached. The principal barriers to local cybersecurity are financial and organizations. Although a number of policies, tools and practices to improve cybersecurity, few local governments are making wide use of them. Last, local governments suffer from too little awareness of and support for cybersecurity within their organizations.