Bartow focuses on security after major Atlanta hack

CARTERSVILLE — Even before the recent ransomware attack on the Atlanta city government, both county and city-level governments in Bartow have been taking precautionary steps to protect their electronic information from hackers.

In the wake of that major security breach, however, there’s a renewed focus on upgrading and safeguarding Bartow’s municipal cyberinfrastructure — although most local governments are still without a formal policy to respond to potential ransomware incidents.

A relatively new form of hacking, ransomware entails the installation of malicious software on hardware that either locks users out of their systems or encrypts their files to be inaccessible until a payment is made.

Cartersville Assistant City Manager Dan Porta said he’s not exactly sure what method was used to attack the City of Atlanta — or “how they ascertained the damage” — but he said Cartersville nonetheless takes a “layered approach” to preventing numerous types of data breaches.

He said the city regularly monitors its servers for possible hacks and extensively uses spam filtering programs to root out any potential “phishers” — malevolent actors posing as legitimate email senders.

“We have servers that could contain data, obviously, we have detailed customer information, but we have safeguards in place already,” he said. “For instance, if you come in and make an application for city services, you have to provide, for example, a Social Security number or credit card information ... that information is encrypted already, and once it’s entered into the system you can only see, maybe the last four digits.”

That kind of sensitive information, he added, isn’t accessible to lower-level staff.

James Swift, Cartersville Daily Tribune News