Federal officials urged state and local government and education leaders this week to focus on some of the Federal government’s top existing resources in the fight against ransomware attacks – including one principle that’s easy to say but harder to do – don’t meet ransom demands.

Vanderbilt University has named Jess Evans as its new chief information officer (CIO). Evans will begin her new role on Nov. 7.

The nation’s second largest school district is still recovering from a ransomware attack that took place over a month ago. In an Oct. 2 update, Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD) Superintendent Albert Carvalho said the syndicate group responsible for the cyberattack has leaked the stolen data.

Many IT leaders in state & local government are looking to improve service and project delivery while battling limited resources and tight budgets, a one-platform approach to managing services and projects could be the answer. Here’s why – by using a single platform for IT Service Management (ITSM) and Project Portfolio Management (PPM) you can better understand your resource capacity and plan accordingly.

The North Carolina Board of Science, Technology, and Innovation announced it awarded 117 grants – worth a total of $4.95 million – to 101 North Carolina small businesses to advance innovative, next-generation technologies through the One North Carolina Small Business Program.

The Department of Labor’s (DoL) Office of Inspector General (OIG) determined that the agency – along with state workforce agencies – has paid more than $45 billion in unemployment insurance (UI) pandemic benefits to fraudsters, according to an alert memorandum published on Sept. 21.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott announced he is allocating $3.2 million of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds from the Mayor’s Office of Recovery Programs (MORP) towards modernizing government services and improving service performance and equity.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has announced a first-of-its-kind cybersecurity grant program specifically to support state and local governments (SLGs) across the country.

The Federal government’s Joint Ransomware Task Force (JRTF) kicked off its inaugural meeting with a discussion of new initiatives to collaborate with state, local, tribal, and territorial entities to protect against ransomware intrusions and disrupt malicious actors, according to a September 14 press release from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

The City of San Jose, California has awarded $3 million to Actelis Networks for a multi-year program to modernize and scale an Intelligent Transportation System (ITS), allowing the city to upgrade its existing traffic communications network.