CitySmart by Sophicity
This curated content is from the CitySmart by Sophicity blog sharing non-technical, municipal-relevant insights about critical technology issues and focusing on how technology reduces costs, helps better serve citizens, and lessens cybersecurity risks.
Displaying Items 1-15 (of 56)
When someone physically hoards items, their bad habits create a “mountain of stuff” that becomes very visible over time. The same thing happens with electronic information—but the problem is less noticeable because the hoarding does not turn into a physical “mountain of stuff.”
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If a city focuses on information security, they likely focus on securing servers, computers, laptops, and network equipment. Part of a thorough information security plan includes securing overlooked items with vulnerabilities. Here are five common risks you need to address.
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When we talk to cities about their IT support, one frustration they often bring up is responsiveness. Your IT support may be talented and knowledgeable, but if they do not respond quickly when you need and depend on them, the money you pay them is too much—and may even be wasted.
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As stewards of important citizen and city business information, cities need to treat electronic information just as they would treat valuables locked up in a vault or locking the doors of buildings.
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Cities rely heavily on hardware, software, and technology equipment to run their operations. Each piece of hardware, software, and technology comes from a vendor that you must interact with in some way. In some cases, you may rarely interact with the vendor. In other cases, such as with specialized software, you may interact with the vendor a lot.
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Hiring reactive, “as needed” IT support begins with hope and temptation. The hope? “I’m a small city. We don’t need much technology support. Our servers and computers should work fine most of the time.” The temptation? “If those servers and computers work fine most of the time, then I’ll barely need to use our IT support—and we’ll save lots of money.” And how does that hope and temptation usually turn out? Not well.
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If this question alarms you or you can’t answer it, you’ve got a problem. Testing is quite possibly the most important part of a data backup and disaster recovery solution—short of actually backing up the data.
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You may have heard the phrase, “Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.” We think of that phrase when talking to cities about data backup. Without much explanation, we hear their data backup is “fine.” But it often sounds like denial of deeper problems. What does “fine” exactly mean?
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Over the past few months, various news items continue to emerge about municipalities opening themselves up to data incidents and cyberattacks from outdated software. For example, 200 Vermont municipalities using New England Municipal Resource Center (NEMRC) software had the personal information of city employees and citizens exposed by a security vulnerability from unpatched software.
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It was inevitable. With so many serious data breaches over the years (including Yahoo’s 3.5 billion records breached, Marriott’s 500,000,000 records breached, Adobe’s 152,000,000 records breached, eBay’s 145,000,000 records breached, etc.), hackers have compiled a massive list of usernames and passwords on the Dark Web.
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As most information today is electronically created and stored, that information also needs backing up in case of an incident such as a server failure, natural disaster, and (yes) ransomware. That’s why a records management strategy that backs up important documents and data is so critical.
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While cybersecurity can seem like an overwhelming problem, we strongly and consistently encourage cities to start with the initial step of addressing the most important low-hanging fruit risks we call the 3Ps: passwords, patching, and people.
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Unpatched computers, servers, and devices are one of the top three reasons for cyber breaches. This type of breach isn’t caused by some unknown reason. It stems from a known issue. A patch (or fix) already exists, and the breach occurs because the patch hasn’t been applied. So, why is patching a problem?
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If you’ve survived so far with only a few networked PCs with a critical application residing on a single employee’s computer, then that’s great. But with cyberattacks growing more sophisticated, higher technology standards expected of cities, and significant liability concerns around sensitive and confidential data, it may be time to look at a solution that mitigates the risk.
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Cost-cutting measures focused only on price will also affect your city’s security as well as your operations. Cybersecurity has become a serious issue for cities. Not having the right IT support can open your city up to financial and legal liability from the effects of ransomware, viruses, and data breaches.
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Displaying Items 1-15 (of 56)