‘Holistic’ approach needed for cybersecurity threats in age of FirstNet, next-gen 911

Constant communication among public-safety agencies is an essential part of counteracting these ever-evolving threats, because hackers are swapping information. Also, if one agency is experiencing a particular vulnerability, other agencies probably are, too.

“There is a threat to public safety. We need to be very cognizant of that fact and that it’s growing,” Ashurkoff said. “In defending against it, we have to take a holistic approach. We can’t rely on one tool or one service provider to give us that protection. We need to take charge of our security.

“Finally, I can’t emphasize enough: collaboration, collaboration, collaboration. We need to share. We need to stay ahead of those who are attacking us.”

Continuous training is also important, as strategies change and new threats are ever surfacing. Employees also represent a vulnerability. All it takes is something as simple as an employee clicking on a bogus link to “give away access to the system,” Willingham said.

Willingham said it’s also important for PSAP managers to embrace their role in cybersecurity. That means understanding the details of their system and what the weaknesses are, as well as identifying what controls need to be implemented and what aspects of the network need to be monitored.

“One of the questions that we’ll ask is, ‘What is the normal data flow on your network for an average day, an average week, an average month?’ And the number of people who can actually answer that question is very small,” Willingham said.

“How does your network normally function? How does it normally look? What users normally access given resources? These are things that leaders and managers need to understand, so they can start to identify what is abnormal. If your secretary never accesses the file server and, all of a sudden, she’s accessed that file server 53 times in the last two days, that is abnormal.”