Towns seek cybersecurity funding after Bazetta loss | News, Sports, Jobs

HUBBARD TOWNSHIP — Bazetta Township losing money on more than eight transactions to phishing scams was motivation to apply for cybersecurity grant software packages through the state, trustees said.

“They weren’t even hacked. “They asked for someone to send the county a new bank account number, and the county sent them $160,000.” Trustee Jason Tedrow said at a meeting earlier this month. “Speaking of taxes, they just gave $160,000 to someone we don’t know.”

In August, Bazetta’s financial officer discovered eight transactions totaling $160,857 that had been intercepted by an unknown party. Trumbull County Sheriff Paul Monroe later said law enforcement was able to recover some, but not all, of the funds.

Because half the funds were still missing, the county auditor and Bazetta trustees hired legal counsel to represent them in the matter.

The first grant that Hubbard Trustee William Colletta applied for earlier this month was a $10,800 cybersecurity software grant.

The second of the two grants is a mitigation grant totaling $5,852, which will enable the county’s web pages to change from the .us domain to .gov.

.us domain names can be registered by anyone, including private organizations, for a fee and are managed by Registry Services LLC on behalf of the United States Department of Commerce. However, .gov domains are free and available only to government entities in the United States.

They can also only be registered through a letter of authorization from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

The state cybersecurity grant was announced earlier this year when Governor Mike DeWine announced $7 million in funding would be provided to counties through CyberOhio to help them increase their preparedness and resilience with cybersecurity software and services. Proper security software and services included endpoint protection, multi-factor authentication, and secure mail, as well as vulnerability management.

Colletta said a representative of Team Office Technologies in Youngstown told him the state plans to issue a mandate requiring government agencies to create a similar security system.

“We’re not ahead of the game, but we’re in good shape because we’ve just started protecting our emails with him (the agent), so hopefully we can take that further.” said Colletta.

Hubbard isn’t the only county looking to strengthen its online presence.

Liberty Township Fiscal Officer Matthew Connelly said they received an email from the state about the grant a month ago, but their interest and decision coincided with the event.

Connelly said he received only one phishing email per year during his three-year tenure with the county, but he was able to point them out because the county recently provided fraud training to all employees through the auditor’s office.

Connelly, who applied for the grant with the help of the county’s IT specialist Joel Davis at the beginning of the month, said it will take 30 days to find out if they received the money. They expect to receive $29,500 from both grants they applied for, but estimate the costs total closer to $25,000.

“We said the cost to do this countywide would be about $25,000; “All printed materials – our letterheads, all our business cards, things like that – need to change from .com to .gov.” Connelly said.