While cybersecurity risk management has long been on the radar of government IT managers, it’s also attracting the attention of municipal finance organizations. In a Dec. 14 survey by Hilltop Securities, municipal bond credit analysts said they felt state and local governments were unprepared for cyberattacks. A full 63% said they thought governments were “hardly prepared” for cyberattacks, and 30% said they were “somewhat prepared.” Only 6% considered state and local governments “on the way to being prepared, with none of the analysts considering municipalities “very prepared” or even “prepared.” The growing number of ransomware attacks state and local governments are facing has municipal bond issuers on alert. The ransomware attack on Atlanta was a “watershed moment,” Omid Rahmani, associate director for U.S. public finance at Fitch Ratings, said in a Nov. 1 interview with Hilltop.
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