Cybersecurity

The court’s online civil and criminal dockets repeated failed Monday and authorities had announced the previous evening it would be closed that day. The closure extended into Tuesday as officials probed its cause.

Labor unions successfully argued that the U.S. Department of Education and Office of Personnel Management violated the Privacy Act of 1974 by giving DOGE access to citizens’ personal information.

Law enforcement is still investigating last year's phishing attack on Grand Forks Public Schools, but they recovered more than half the $2.2 million stolen, and the loss has not impacted funding for day-to-day operations.

Lawmakers in Arkansas and Missouri are considering legislation that would bolster cyber reporting and data privacy standards for businesses; and, in Texas, tighten cybersecurity standards for water utilities.

A phishing scam targeting residents in the Maryland city about unpaid parking tickets is not connected or related to an ongoing “cyber incident” disrupting some services in the county.

Racine Unified School District in Wisconsin is offering free credit monitoring and identity protection services to employees after a Dec. 13 cybersecurity incident. Forensic investigators said students were not impacted.

Bad actors known collectively by that name are staging attacks on targets in more than 70 countries, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the FBI said. The latter advises regular system backups.

County buildings are shuttered Monday as officials prove an “ongoing cyber incident of external origin” that began disrupting services Saturday. County schools and the library have not been impacted.

Cybersecurity has been in recent national headlines, with experts claiming DOGE is giving unvetted access to sensitive data. But do these partisan attacks harm the entire cyber industry and government trust?

Cuts to CISA and the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force have secretaries of state and municipal clerks worried about the security of voter registration databases and other critical election systems.

Williamsburg-James City County Public Schools in Virginia are back online after a Feb. 9 cyber incident that precluded virtual learning during a snowstorm last week.

On top of worries about enrollment, data security and staffing, new policies and scrutiny on higher education from the federal government have made risk audits and strategic planning more urgent than ever.

The state’s new threat assessment report focuses on how cyber criminals are using the newest tools to hack into systems and mount ransomware attacks on governments. The threats could be especially acute this year.

With Phase 1A of the CORE.NV project complete in January, Nevada has set the foundation for its enterprise resource planning update, its CIO Timothy Galluzi said, and enabled construction of better service delivery processes.

A collaborative program between Missoula College and the University of Montana's College of Business focuses cybersecurity studies on business operations and what principles keep their systems secure.

If it comes to fruition, local leaders expect the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center's plan to build a $16 million quantum computing complex in Holyoke to produce durable, well-paying jobs.

A North Carolina school district wants the state attorney general to sue the software company PowerSchool over a data breach in December that affected school staff and the Social Security numbers of 910 charter students.

While attention is on federal government staff who are leaving, my focus is on those who remain. I’d like to offer personal experiences and lessons learned from government cuts and reorgs during my time with Michigan IT.