From: Governing
Cyber breaches can cost the taxpayers a lot of money. But the consequences aren’t just financial.
Cybersecurity is more than just an information-technology issue. It is a public-safety concern and an area of potential exposure to liability. As part of their daily operations, governments collect personal data to use to improve public services. With such large amounts of data housed on their servers, it is not a question of if but of when a government or one of its agencies will experience a data breach.
That’s a reality that officials of Minnesota’s Mille Lacs County are painfully aware of. Last year, the county settled a $1 million class-action lawsuit after an employee was accused of accessing driving records without authorization. Over a four-year period, according to the suit, a county child-support investigator accessed driver’s license records of 379 county residents not associated with any family-services cases or investigations. Once made aware, the county notified these individuals in a letter acknowledging “unauthorized access” by a “former employee.”
Leave a Reply