Nevada officials outline recovery from statewide cyber incident and plans for beefed-up defenses

Nevada’s chief information officers and security leaders briefed the Interim Finance Committee on Oct. 16 about a recent cybersecurity incident that affected executive-branch systems and prompted a broad recovery effort. The Office of Information Security and Cyber Defense (OISCD), Governor’s Technology Office and affiliated state IT teams said the incident was detected early, contained and triaged; details remain under a privileged investigation while a public after-action report is prepared.

State CIO Timothy Galuzzi and OISCD deputy Adam Miller described technical and policy work already under way: restoring services, using cyber liability insurance to cover direct costs, procuring vendor incident-response help, and standing up a two-month “hypercare” support window after the next enterprise system go‑live. Galuzzi said the state maintains approximately $7 million in cyber insurance for the incident’s direct expenses and that costs to date appear within that coverage.

Committee members asked about statewide security maturity and whether a dedicated statewide Security Operations Center (SOC) or long-range investment would have prevented the incident; IT leaders said more resources help but cannot guarantee prevention, and outlined a phased approach that combines federal grant opportunities, state funding requests and tighter coordination across agencies. OISCD also reported a short-term funded work program (approved earlier by the committee) to add staff support and to contract for a top‑down review of policies, incident response and governance.

Officials said an after-action review is being prepared with the intent to publish what can be shared publicly; some sensitive material will remain confidential while law‑enforcement and forensic activities continue. The committee pressed for regular updates and clearer timelines for follow-up funding requests. State IT leaders committed to return to IFC with progress reports and to coordinate any proposed budget items with the Governor’s Finance Office and LCB.