Pa. local governments want long-term state money for cybersecurity

By Min Xian
Spotlight PA State College
STATE COLLEGE — Local governments in Pennsylvania could soon have access to up to $25 million in federal funding to help them prepare for digital security threats facing critical infrastructure, according to Gov. Josh Shapiro’s budget proposal.
But county and municipal leaders say that money won’t be enough to keep up with mandatory technology updates, higher insurance rates, and the rise of artificial intelligence, which have all added to cybersecurity costs.
“Our cybersecurity technology spending has more than tripled over the last four years, and this trend can be seen across all counties due to the evolving threat landscape,” Joe Sassano, executive director of information technology for York County, told state lawmakers in January.
Local government officials and state legislators see cyberattacks as a growing threat. In November, a cyberattack halted pumping equipment of the Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa in western Pennsylvania. In January, the Bucks County 911 dispatch system had a nine-day outage because of a ransomware attack.
To help governments nationwide deal with these hazards, Congress established the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program as part of the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. These grants, which are awarded first to states, can be used to devise or improve cybersecurity plans, implement those plans, or address imminent threats.
In the program’s first two years, Pennsylvania received about $10.6 million. Those dollars paid for intrusion detection systems for 148 local government recipients, and 132 awardees got funding for digital best practices training, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) told Spotlight PA in an email.
Because local governments manage essential public utilities like water and sewage plants, the need for more cybersecurity resources is great, John Berti, a past president of the Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities Association, said in testimony given to lawmakers in late January.

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