Mohave Today

City of Kingman issued the following announcement on Aug. 24.

The City of Kingman’s investigation and forensic analysis into the February 2021 cyber incident are now complete. As indicated in previous press releases to our community, the city is insured against cyberattacks and worked closely with its insurance provider to secure investigation assistance from leading data privacy and cybersecurity specialists. The city secured these services for a very limited cost due to its insured status, which will be at no cost to taxpayers.

The investigation revealed that information related to a limited number of individuals may have been impacted as a result of the cyber incident. In accordance with its legal obligations, the city is sending direct notice of the incident to any such potentially impacted individuals. If you do not receive a direct notice regarding this incident, then any personal information the City may maintain related to you was not impacted.  

The City of Kingman’s government operations have been fully operational since April 2021. The City did not lose control of its network as result of this incident, nor did it pay any criminals for any information.

The cybersecurity specialists hired by the city have not been able to officially define how the city’s systems were breached. The privacy of the people we serve is very important to us. We treat our duty to safeguard the information entrusted to us as an utmost priority. As part of our ongoing commitment to the privacy and security of information in our care, we are reviewing our existing policies and procedures. We are also implementing enhanced employee training protocols to mitigate any risk associated with this incident and to better prevent future incidents. The city has also implemented a number of technical and policy changes to help keep the city’s systems safe in the future.

The City would like to remind residents that, although certain emails may seem legitimate at first glance, it is more important than ever to remain vigilant against attempts to use social engineering and other scamming tactics to gain access to computer systems and commit cybercrimes.

Original source can be found here.