Risks of Cyber Threats to Municipalities and Small Business
In the last decade or two, the world of technology has experienced exceptional advancements that have had a large influence on society. Communities and businesses are increasingly becoming more and more dependent on information systems and technology to carry out their day to day duties. In any society or business environment information technology has assumed a critical role to the extent that a disruption in IT systems could result in severe impacts on human life or business operations. Many businesses have embarked on a journey to completely digitalize their business operations to eliminate the traditional manual based business models. With the advent of smart cities, municipalities have also gone onboard with digitalization to try and automate various processes such as controlling traffic lights within their cities. Although the efforts to digitalize the business environment and metropolitan have helped small businesses and municipalities enhance their efficiency and effectiveness in delivering services to consumers and citizens respectively, it has also exposed them to many cyber threats risks.
Municipalities and small businesses have become soft targets for cyber attackers. This has been largely influenced by the fact that the two entities have only focused on implementing new technology but have lacked the security systems to counter cyber-attacks. Cyber-attacks continue to have enormous economic impacts on local governments and small businesses because the two struggle to fight extremely sophisticated attacks because of a lack of investment in security software and technology. Without adequate cybersecurity controls measures municipal and small business information and operations continue to be at risk of cyber threats such as a denial of services attack, Ransomware attacks, malware infections, cryptojacking, IoT threats, and state-sponsored threats. These cyber-threats have crippled small businesses and cities.
Denial of services (DoS) attacks can have devastating impacts such as loss of critical services. The high risk of not being able to access critical data such as customer data in a small business the robots that control traffic lights in the city can rake havoc that can result in business closure and road accidents respectively. Besides, the loss of service DoS attacks poses the risk of loss of consumer confidence. Consumers want to deal with an organization whom they trust with their data. They need assurance that the information that they freely give can be safeguarded from cybercriminals. For instance, in small business setup consumers expect that the business can protect the data they collect from being accessed by cybercriminals. This data is governed by privacy policies, where the business declares what it can and cannot do with the clients’ data. Failure to live up to the declarations of the privacy policy can cost the business a fortune in the form of court settlements and reparations to consumers who may have been affected by a cyber-attack. Municipalities lately have been a high target of denial of service attacks because of the increased use of smart technologies in critical infrastructures such as water and power systems. Denial of service attacks can leave cities without power or water for long hours. Specific cyber-attacks target the SCADA systems that control critical systems such as water systems and power generation. Major attacks of these systems affect the citizens at large hence they is a greater risk of resilience from the general public who may sue the municipality.
Increased automation of processes has led to a rapid rise in the use of Internet of Things devices in both smart cities and small business environments. While the Internet of Things devices can essentially enhance productivity they also bring several risks. IoT devices have weak authentication which can be exploited by hackers. IoT devices are often connected to the same network with servers within an organization’s network. Therefore once a hacker has exploited the weak authentication of IoT devices it becomes easy for them to access any other critical asset connected to the same network. An emerging attack that IoT devices small businesses and municipalities have been put at risk of is cryptojacking. Crypojacking involves establishing entry points that can be easily leveraged by cybercriminals to steal sensitive and valuable information. The goal of crypto-jacking attacks is to steal the hardware resources of exploited devices to mine cryptocurrency. Because IoT devices provide these entry points into the organization’s network, they put the organization at risk of misuse of hardware devices. Crypojacking can have impacts such as reduced productivity. This is as a result of the energy or computing resources of hardware components being used for the wrong purposes. For instance, in a city that uses vehicular networks to provide road users with traffic information, crypto-jacking can cause slow flow messages which in vehicular networks is classified as a time attack. Time attacks delay the traffic messages being transferred in a vehicular network. This delay can have severe impacts on human life to the extent of death.
Ransomware attacks are another form of attack that have had detrimental effects on small businesses and municipalities. Often small businesses and municipalities lack the security or user training to detect and prevent cyber-attacks. Due to the lack of preventive measures and training users often fall victim to a phishing email that activates ransomware and in turn, allows the attacker to completely take over the computer or the entire network. Ransomware attacks can be of two forms namely the locker ransomware and crypto-ransomware. The earlier completely locks the user out of their device for example a computer while the latter encrypts the user’s data. The direct risk associated with ransomware attacks is a significant system downtime which can lead to a loss in revenue. The easiest way for many small businesses and municipalities to reclaim data access after a ransomware attack is to pay the ransomware. This is mainly influenced by the lack of technologies and resources to reverse engineer the attack. However paying the ransom does not guarantee restoration of data, it rather encourages a malicious cycle of cyber-crime targeted at small businesses and municipalities.
Malicious software is another high-risk cyber threat that small businesses and municipalities are exposed to. Viruses can cripple business operations by deleting and corrupting critical files. Trojans can have more severe impacts because they open doors to the network for other sophisticated attacks.
The lack of cybersecurity initiatives in small businesses and municipalities is detrimental to their ability to their growth, productivity, and service delivery capabilities. The current gap between the adoption of new technology and the implementation of security controls has exposed small businesses and municipalities to a wide range of cyber-attacks that include virus infections, ransomware attacks, and IoT targeted attacks. There is a dire need for small businesses and municipalities to invest in cybersecurity measures including employee awareness and training to reduce the risk of cyber threats.
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