South Dakota opens bids in state-funded $7 million cybersecurity effort to protect local governments
gorodenkoff via Getty Images
South Dakota wants to hire a company to review local governments’ vulnerabilities to hackers.
This story was originally published by South Dakota Searchlight.
South Dakota wants to hire a company to review local governments’ vulnerabilities to hackers.
The request for proposals was announced Monday by Attorney General Marty Jackley’s office. Madison-based Dakota State University (DSU) will review each company’s pitch to “evaluate and optimize firewall configurations” across local government networks. Firewalls are designed to protect computer networks by monitoring traffic across them.
The winning bidder will tap into a $7 million pool of state general funds earmarked by lawmakers last year for cybersecurity. The administration of former Gov. Kristi Noem twice declined to apply for the state’s share of $1 billion in federal grant funding for local cybersecurity. The 2024 bill that created the program came from Sen. Casey Crabtree, R-Madison.
The “SecureSD: Cybersecurity for Municipalities and Counties Initiative” partners Jackley’s office and DSU to address concerns about the security of the locally operated systems used to manage elections, tax collections, property records and a host of other sensitive information.
The program hired a director last fall who’d once overseen South Dakota’s centralized education email system. Crabtree frequently lauded that system during last year’s legislative session as a model to improve the scattershot setups found across South Dakota’s city and county networks.
The website for SecureSD calls local governments “among the highest value targets for hackers due to the critical infrastructure and public services they must provide without interruption.”
In South Dakota, a 2021 cyberattack in Brown County affected city services. In 2018, South Dakota sent electronic payments to someone posing as a vendor.
A 2019 ransomware attack in Hutchinson County temporarily held up $4 million in county business by targeting receipts and records, according to the Yankton Press & Dakotan.
Attacks have risen sharply nationwide in recent years — 2023 saw a 10% spike in consumer complaints to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, rising to 880,413. That’s double the number of crimes reported in 2019, and the agency put the monetary losses at $37.4 billion.
Companies can apply for the bid through Feb. 28.
South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com.
NEXT STORY: Kept in the dark