New Orleans is the latest victim of a string of Cyberattacks this year

2019 was a lucrative year for hackers targeting local governments for their nefarious activities

It was only a few days ago that I wrote about three high profile hacks involving the biggest medical diagnostic lab in Canada, a retail chain in the U.S & a well-known blockchain network VeChain. The increased frequency of these cyber attacks is making it difficult to keep track of them, let alone fix this ballooning problem.

Just over a week ago, the southern U.S city of New Orleans suffered a cyberattack as the city employees were asked to shut down their computers on the weekend as a precaution, eventually filing for a declaration of a state of emergency. The news was announced through the official twitter account of the Mayor of the city on December 15th.

The suspicious activity was first noted on the city networks around 5 am the Friday before with heightened attacks around 8 am. The city’s IT department reported both phishing attempts and ransomware attacks aimed at their computer systems. Once this was confirmed, the IT team shut down their servers & computers to avoid any further complications.

All the automated services including the city website (NOLA) were shut down as local…