The ‘mind-boggling’ risks your city faces from cyber attackers

During a 2014 cybersecurity drill, New York City officials held with intelligence agencies, the Federal Bureau of Investigation posed several scenarios. What if the city noticed that the 911 system had shut down? What if criminals attempted to coordinate a computer attack on emergency infrastructure with a physical attack?The city often had the same response: They’d call the FBI. Unfortunately, they were told, that might not help. “That’s not what we do,” Leo Taddeo, former head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s cyber and special operations division in New York, said he told them. “We don’t come and fix your computers.Security breaches at the federal government or large corporate levels tend to attract the most media attention, but cities, counties and states across the U.S. also grapple with questions of how to secure sprawling networks, which connect agencies with vastly different purposes, sizes and budgets, against cybercriminals.