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Lawmakers hear local officials, vendors urge statewide cyber coordination and recurring funding
Summary
At a joint House hearing, local officials, vendors and state associations told Pennsylvania lawmakers that rising cyberattacks, AI-driven threats and gaps in local capacity require coordinated state support, recurring funding and shared technical services such as joint security operation centers and incident response retainers.
HARRISBURG, Pa. — Lawmakers from the House Communications and Technology Committee and the House Local Government Committee heard more than four hours of testimony on how ransomware, nation-state espionage and rapidly evolving technologies are straining local governments, school districts and municipal authorities across Pennsylvania.
Local officials and private-sector cybersecurity leaders urged a mix of state-led coordination, recurring funding and shared services to shore up communities that lack technical staff or budgets to defend against modern attacks. "Cybersecurity has emerged as a critical concern as local governments now extend their responsibilities beyond traditional infrastructure," said Chair Freeman in opening remarks.
Carnegie Mellon representative Randy Trezak warned that public-sector incident volumes remain high, citing DHS and CISA triage metrics and recent utility attacks. "The number of cybersecurity incidents reached 30,000 in terms of [CISA's] 24/7 operations center," he said, and emphasized risk-management, zero-trust architectures, patch management and centralized monitoring as priorities.
Heather Morton of the National Conference of State…
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