Building Cyber Resilience in Winchester

Published on September 02, 2025

Picture this: Foreign-based malevolent hackers infiltrate your city’s information infrastructure and hack thousands of city government devices. Key city operations come to a screeching halt, causing widespread confusion and frustration. To mitigate the crisis, the city is unexpectedly forced to spend millions of dollars while managing the disruption of public services.

Sounds like an action movie, right? Unfortunately, it happened in Atlanta, Georgia, despite the city’s reputation as a hub of innovation and technical development. In 2018, two Iran-based hackers used brute force ransomware to access the city’s closed information network. Their attack temporarily shut down city utility, parking, and judicial programs, creating havoc.

At the time of the attack, Atlanta was spending about $108 million per year—more than Winchester’s entire budget— on cybersecurity. However, Atlanta’s investment did not protect it from a well-planned cyber strike, highlighting the need for a comprehensive approach to cyber defense.

If a major city like Atlanta is susceptible to malign actors, imagine the cybersecurity threat to smaller cities, towns, and counties. Smaller localities may lack adequate funding or quick access to emergency support when an attack occurs, making them an easy target.

The cybersecurity threat to local governments extends beyond the disruption of public services. It includes data and identity theft. As data stewards, localities store residents’ personally identifiable information (PII), such as bank account details, healthcare and tax records, property information, criminal history, employment, and educational background. An intruder might even find voting records on the servers.

In Winchester, Virginia, defending against and mitigating a cyber attack is one of our highest emergency management priorities. There’s no such thing as absolute cybersecurity. However, like physical security, a defense-in-depth cyberstrategy provides redundancy at multiple levels and increased protection. This is important considering the resource-constrained environment faced by many local governments.

In Winchester, our defense-in-depth strategy includes:

• Deploying zero-trust architecture
• Endpoint protection
• Multi-factor authentication
• Extended detection and response
• Improved governance; external partnerships
• Public outreach

These efforts are no panacea. However, by hardening our city against cyber-attacks, we may make it a less attractive target for would-be intruders. Our tactics are dynamic; as the threat evolves, we will need to continue to develop and strengthen our defenses.