Mayors worry about cybersecurity almost as much as substance use, mental health
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By
Chris Teale
The National League of Cities’ State of the Cities survey found that 39% of mayors are very concerned about cyber, which is not far behind more traditional public health issues.
Cybersecurity has become almost as big a public health and safety concern as mental health and substance use, according to a major survey of city leaders released last week.
The National League of Cities’ annual State of the Cities report found that 39% of mayors say they are very or extremely concerned about cybersecurity, the third biggest specific public health and safety concern behind substance use (54%) and mental health (56%). Fifty-nine percent said they are slightly or moderately concerned about cybersecurity. It’s the second time that NLC has included cybersecurity in its annual survey as a public safety issue that mayors are concerned about, following last year’s edition of the State of Cities report.
“Research shows that cyberattacks on municipal governments are rising quickly, revealing vulnerabilities and inflicting financial damage,” the report says. “The complexity of the cybersecurity landscape is exacerbated by a growing technological skill gap, which poses additional challenges for local governments that may have limited capabilities.”
While the opioid and mental health crises have bedeviled city leaders for many years, cybersecurity’s position as a top public health and safety concern — marginally above others like suicide, emergency preparedness, violence and property crime — shows how hacks on local governments and their agencies have mayors and their staff worried.
“The hacks, the things you're seeing publicly are, I believe, the tip of the iceberg, from what we're hearing in our pulse surveys from our mayors,” said Christine Baker-Smith, director of research at NLC’s Center for Research and Data Analysis and a co-author of the report. “This is happening regularly, whether it's ransomware or it's just the tech system going down. These are growing concerns.”
Baker-Smith said the growing cybersecurity concerns among city leaders also reflects the increasingly central role technology plays, the growth of artificial intelligence and the need to collect significant amounts of data to train that AI. Those concerns also highlight how so many operations run at the local level, including critical infrastructure like water and power systems, rely on sometimes outdated technology that may have significant vulnerabilities.
“I'm not sure that it's AI itself that is driving concerns about cybersecurity, as much as it is shining a spotlight on the number of places where we use technology that may or may not be fully secure,” Baker-Smith said.
Also of concern to mayors is the lack of cybersecurity awareness among their residents, especially as one of the biggest attack threats remains phishing emails that can impact anyone. And given that local police departments are often called in to investigate cyberattacks, alongside state and federal agencies, making sure that residents are protecting themselves has become a local worry.
“As more of their residents are online, they are more vulnerable to cybersecurity issues than before, and mayors are definitely concerned about that and trying to figure out how to inform and engage their residents on protecting themselves,” Baker-Smith said. “It is something they never had to think of as a responsibility before.”
It all speaks to how public safety has evolved in cities to be an issue that touches and impacts everything else. It remains a top concern for mayors, second only to economic development overall, but municipal leaders are seeing how difficult it is to do anything without having public safety.
“Local officials are thinking about public health and public safety, not just as intertwined, but as part of the whole,” said Ivonne Montes Diaz, a program manager at NLC’s Center of Research and Data Analysis, and a report co-author. “If you have no security in the streets, your economic development downtown is not going to go up. That's one of the reasons why they understand that public safety really impacts other areas.”
A challenging aspect of cybersecurity — and public safety more broadly — is a lack of qualified people to fill vacant roles in city government to protect their residents. In cybersecurity specifically, governments have long struggled to hire as they compete against the higher salaries, benefits and other perks offered by the private sector.
But help is at hand, as more states collaborate with their universities, colleges and community colleges in areas like cyber ranges and joint security operations centers, which help build a pipeline of cyber professionals and get students involved early. And the need to upskill existing workers is something that city leaders must continue to wrestle with, even in areas not traditionally seen as vulnerable to cyberattacks.
Mayors increasingly recognize the challenges they face in cybersecurity and are determined to rise to the challenge, the report found.
“We’ll modernize our city’s financial operations with updated technology that enhances efficiency and transparency,” Carmella Mantello, mayor of Troy, New York, is quoted as saying in the report. “These improvements, coupled with strengthened cybersecurity, aren’t just upgrades – they’re investments in protecting our city and ensuring we’re prepared for the future.”