Cabarrus County ranked first for its cybersecurity

CABARRUS COUNTY, N.C. — Cabarrus county was just ranked first in a national survey for its cybersecurity.

The survey singles out the best technology practices among counties, which included everything from streamlining government services to protecting systems from cyberattacks.

Cabarrus County said it gets a lot of phishing emails and those are gateways for hackers to get your personal data.

“We have thousands of those emails hit our mailboxes every day we try to bounce them with the firewall, so employees don’t have to deal with that,” said Todd Shanley, Cabarrus County chief information officer.

The county has ranked in the top 10 each year since 2012.

Hackers are increasingly targeting local governments.

Not that long ago, malware closed the Oconee County courthouse in South Carolina and compromised the government’s technology. Some of its computers are still offline.

A ransomware attack hit Mecklenburg County in 2017.

Hackers froze at least 80 servers for more than two weeks,

County leaders refused to pay a ransom and ended up building their servers from scratch.

Cox Media Group