Tag Archive for: rural

Vijayasai expresses concern over rise in cybercrimes in rural areas

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Update: 2023-07-22 08:31 IST

Vijayawada: Union Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw said that State governments are responsible for the prevention, investigation of cyber crimes through police departments including in training the police personnel and upgrading their technical knowhow to investigate and crack such crimes.

Replying to a question raised by YSRCP MP V Vijayasai Reddy in Rajya Sabha on Friday on increasing cyber crimes in rural India and cyber attackers targeting rural population with less awareness, the Union Minister said a toll free number 1930 was set up by the Central government.

He said a Cyber Crime Coordination Centre under the Ministry of Home Affairs has been designated as the nodal point in the fight against cyber crime. In addition CY Train portal was developed by Cyber Coordination centre for the capacity building of police officers.

The Union Minister said Cyber Swachhta Kendra-Botnet cleaning and Malware analysis centre operated by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has been established. The centre works in coordination and collaboration with Internet service providers, academia and Industry.

The centre facilitates detection of malicious programmes and free tools to remove the same for common users.

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Ransomware attack on rural Mississippi county a ‘cautionary tale’

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A cyber attack on the government computer system in George County, Miss., is a “cautionary tale” for all other small town and rural government agencies, a county official said this week.

The attacks began, unknown to officials until after the fact, last Friday, when numerous “test attacks” on the county’s systems began, according to Communications Director Ken Flanagan.

Saturday, what IT professionals labeled a “brute force attack” began on all entry points into the county’s system. At some point Sunday, an employee received an email and clicked on an enclosed link.

“The email itself was extremely professional looking,” Flanagan said. “It looked like a legitimate ‘time to update your system’ email. It was spot on with graphics, color schemes, font, the whole bit.”

Once the ransomware entered the county system, it made it’s way up what Flanagan described as the “administrative food chain” until it gained access to one of the county’s three servers.

“Once it was inside the server, it was game over,” he said.

The hackers demanded payment to remove the software encryption, with payment in the form of cryptocurrency. Flanagan said Homeland Security investigators have told them to not disclose the amount, but Flanagan did say it was a “noteworthy amount.”

“Our board of supervisors were against (paying) just on principle,” he said, “but once we found the amount, it ended all discussion.”

Flanagan said they and investigators believe the hackers thought George County was a much larger government entity, based on the amount they were seeking, rather than the rural county of less than 25,000 residents.

George County supervisors declared a local emergency (not be to confused with a state of emergency), which allowed them to immediately contract with IT professionals rather than go through the normal state-required bidding process.

“It we’d have had to go get three quotes and go through that whole process, it’d have been a disaster,” Flanagan said.

As it was, the entire county system was shut down for more than two days, with officials at one point having to refresh themselves on how to do the proper accounting to issue handwritten, paper…

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Eastern Upper Peninsula Rural Communities To Receive High Speed Broadband Internet

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$3 Million CARES Grant Awarded to Merit Network

ANN ARBOR, Mich., May 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Merit Network was awarded a $2.99 million Economic Development Administration (EDA) grant under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act Recovery Assistance Grant to support construction of 70 miles of middle-mile fiber optic infrastructure in the Upper Peninsula.

The infrastructure corridor project, named Leveraging Infrastructure for Transforming the Upper Peninsula (LIFT-UP) will pass through Chippewa, Luce and Mackinac counties. This fiber will enable local internet service providers to interconnect with Merit’s middle-mile backhaul to bring reliable, high-speed broadband internet to rural and remote communities in Michigan’s Eastern Upper Peninsula.

The EUPConnect Collaborative, led by the Easter Upper Peninsula Intermediate School District (EUPISD) and the Eastern Upper Peninsula Regional Planning and Development Commission (EUPRPDC) will collaborate with Merit on the project. They have collaborated with Merit’s Michigan Moonshot initiative and the Quello Center for Media and Information Policy at Michigan State University for several years on citizen-scientist crowdsourced research to identify and map broadband access and adoption statistics regionally. An understanding of the prevalence and impact of the digital divide for the region was a first step in developing a blueprint for equitable access.

“The Eastern UP Regional Planning and Development Commission is excited to see this significant EDA investment in broadband for the region. Broadband availability and accessibility has long been the highest priority in our region’s Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy. The MERIT LIFT-UP project will provide much needed investment to move the needle on this issue and make the region more economically competitive on the national and global stage,” said Jeff Hagan, CEO of EUP Regional Planning.

“Every community deserves access to modern digital infrastructure to support education, telemedicine, public safety, workforce needs and economic development, regardless of geographic location. This new federal investment in the Eastern UP helps advance this goal, and…

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Rural towns fear being left out of cybersecurity grants | KCUR 89.3

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The federal government set aside $1 billion to help cities and counties improve their cybersecurity, but rural communities worry they will be left out and end up more susceptible to attacks like ransomware.

The funding comes from the congressional infrastructure law, with $250 million dollars specifically targeted at rural areas. The funds are distributed to states over the next four years and will begin going out later this year.

But rural community leaders say they lack the resources and expertise to come up with a comprehensive cybersecurity plan and to pursue the grants.

“It’s just me and two other people who work for me,” said Scott Avery, the city administrator in Houston, Missouri, population 2,500. “Getting and administering any grant is a lot of work.”

In 2021, more than 150 cities, counties and school districts fell victim to cyberattacks, according to cybersecurity company Emsisoft.

That led to disruptions in services ranging from delayed renewal of driver’s licenses to residents not being able to pay their tax bills. The attacks shut down systems for weeks in some cases and took months to get back to normal.

The need for security upgrades may be more pressing in rural areas than in urban areas.

Last fall, Missouri State Auditor Nicole Galloway released a report highlighting security flaws in several small, rural cities, counties and courthouses.

Galloway cited specific cases of network passwords going unchanged for years, simple passwords routinely shared with outside users and former employees accessing government computers.

BJ Tanksley, Missouri’s director of broadband development, said the regional and state agencies like his need to help.

“When we think about this kind of program, you can tap into statewide networks of people who do this, like the libraries and the other types of associations that have footprints all over the state,” he said.

Tanksley said the knowledge is out there, but regional and state agencies will have to make it a priority to help rural communities protect their digital assets. But they can only do so much.

“I don’t know that we are going to connect them with cybersecurity systems,” he…

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