Cyberthreats continued to exist

Cybersecurity threats have only evolved over the past year. The Babuk malware group, first identified this year, in April stole 250 gigabytes of data from D.C. police and then began publishing the files online.

A May cyberattack knocked the Alaska Court System offline, a data breach in Florida’s unemployment system exposed the personal information of nearly 58,000 accounts and two water facilities in Maine were compromised by ransomware.

An email scam in August cost Peterborough, New Hampshire, $2.3 million.

Ransomware knocked many of the Maryland health agency’s systems offline. And schools everywhere continue to face some of the most vicious attacks by ransomware attackers, though the lack of any reporting requirement leaves the true extent of the issue unclear.

But the government also made inroads on cybersecurity. A Ransomware Task Force in April published an 81-page report with sweeping recommendations to face the ransomware threat, and some of those recommendations have been realized. Most recently, a grant program created by the federal infrastructure package will dispense over four years $1 billion to improve state and local cybersecurity.