Municipal Cybersecurity: More Work Needs to be Done

Abstract

As governments have digitized their operations, they have opened themselves to cyberattacks, resulting in harmful disruptions to government services. The scholarly world has been slow to pick up on this growing risk. Professional associations have conducted studies of their own, and produced recommendations, but few scholars have looked closely at cybersecurity practices at the municipal level. The interconnectedness of local infrastructure—across and among agencies and levels of government—makes it hard to figure out what is happening. In this paper, we urge scholars from multiple disciplines to examine the dangers created by the cross-linkages that characterize local cybersecurity. We examine the existing academic research, and demonstrate the significant growth in cybersecurity practice that has cropped up in spite of the relative sparsity of academic work. Theory and practice need to catch up with each other.

Municipal Cybersecurity—A Neglected Research Area? A Survey of Current Research

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Law Enforcement Officers’ Reaction on Traditional Crimes to Fight Cybercrime Locally

“…Additionally, organizations face challenges in protecting critical infrastructure because cybercriminals target weak spots in a company's defenses through data breaches (Aleem, 2019). As technology continues to advance, local governments are digitizing data online, resulting in data breaches that can stop services for days and sometimes months on local government's data systems (Preis & Susskind, 2020). Consequently, in 2014, President Barack Obama put in place five major legislative proposals for cybersecurity.…”