When cybercriminals launched a ransomware attack on Kalix Kommun one night, they infiltrated the Swedish municipality’s entire IT database and shut down systems managing everything from communications to finances, medical records and heating and ventilation in municipal buildings. The blackout impacted more than 1,600 employees and around 16,000 citizens.   

The City of Saint John in New Brunswick, Canada, faced a similar situation when its IT environment was breached and held hostage for multiple millions of dollars. Meanwhile, a two-pronged nation state attack on the Government of Albania caused 1,118 e-services to go down for three days. 

While all three government organisations were able to rapidly prevent widespread damage and regain control of their IT systems with the help of Microsoft technology, their experiences give a small insight into the extent of the cyber warfare being waged on government agencies around the world. In fact, the Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2023 found that 53 per cent of the “dramatically increasing” number of cyberattacks in more than 100 countries and territories were focused specifically on critical infrastructure and government organisations. 

“Governments are prime targets for ransomware and nation state attacks because they hold a lot of valuable data and they operate the critical infrastructure and services that keep countries running and people safe and healthy,” says Kirk Arthur, worldwide government solutions lead at Microsoft, who previously led data breach investigations for the US Secret Service. “They’re also plagued by challenges such as patched and siloed legacy IT systems, insufficient password control and authentication policies, limited financial resources, and a lack of personnel with the skills and knowledge to implement robust cybersecurity measures.” 

Governments must strengthen their defences to combat such attacks because they compromise far more than just devices, data and networks; they endanger the public and pose serious risks to society.  

“Attacks on critical infrastructure such as power grids, transport networks, water supply or healthcare systems can paralyse…