In the last few years, threat actors have looked increasingly at local governments. This causes a headache for many aspects of their work, including at the recorder’s office. This can subsequently cause issues for the title companies that record transactions in their offices. During the Property Recording Industry Association annual conference, attendees heard a firsthand account of one of these attacks, as well as ways for government and industry members to protect themselves from these attacks.
Joe DeLuca, senior national account manager at CSC Global, began the session by noting that in 2023, the FBI reported government entities were the third-most targeted groups, and government entities are affected the most by ransomware.
“Why government entities?” he said. “Well, for one there’s no shortage of them. There are 90,000 government entities in the United States. We know there are 3,600 recording jurisdictions. That’s a large number of government entities. For hackers and bad actors, it’s a path of least resistance, because [government entities] have limited budgets, limited resources; they have out-of-date technologies. For hackers, that’s a bullseye. That’s a target they want to go after.
“There’s also a limited tolerance for downtime for county government operations,” DeLuca continued. “They can’t afford to be down, so they’re more apt to look to pay the money as opposed to sit it out because they know they can’t operate their county or jurisdiction for any length of time without being connected.”
He noted almost all jurisdictions in the United States are connected to the web and 99 percent use cloud storage. DeLuca pointed out that in 2024, there have been attacks on Kansas City and Atlanta, as well as at least nine counties across the country.
For more, including insights from Licking County, Ohio, Recorder Bryan Long about when his county got hit by a cyber-attack, and from Cassie Kilgore of Cott Systems and Sam Hamilton of Tyler Technologies about how to protect yourself from such attacks, read the full story in our Cybersecurity Today special report, which can be accessed here.