New York State is beginning a $30 million shared services program designed to assist counties with cybersecurity for government systems across the state, including tools to protect against ransomware attacks.
In the initial part of the program, New York’s counties and several municipalities including Albany, Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester, and Yonkers, will be offered CrowdStrike endpoint detection and response (EDR) services at no cost to them. EDR is a technology used to protect computers or servers by monitoring cyber threats in real-time.
The announcement comes a few months after the state created a Joint Security Operations Center in Brooklyn, a centralized cyber command center that houses cybersecurity resources from multiple levels of government under one roof. The JSOC is taking a centralized approach to managing cyber security risk, citing the interconnected nature of the state’s networks and information technology programs that can lead to an attack spreading quickly across the state.
The center hopes to be able to save money by consolidated licensing and economies of scale and provide resources and expertise to local governments that they might not be able to afford on their own.
“My administration is laser focused on providing cyber security resources for local governments,” Governor Kathy Hochul said. “By launching this new $30 million program, we are bolstering the state’s capabilities to respond to the evolving threat of cyberattacks and strengthening our ability to protect New York’s institutions, infrastructure, citizens and public safety.”
The Brooklyn command center brings together cybersecurity teams from federal, state, city, and county governments along with critical businesses and utilities and state entities including homeland security, information technology, police, public transportation, and port and power authorities, among others.
“Every day, local governments across the state face cyber-attacks that can result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages and put critical local services – like public health and safety – in jeopardy,” said Stephen Acquario, director of New York State Association of Counties. He said “every level of government needs to be working together to counter this threat.”
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