Local governments and agencies, like major companies, today face a whole onslaught of cybersecurity threats. Atlanta was recently hit by a ransomware cyberattack that hobbled city services for upwards of 10 days, right on the heels of a similar attack on Colorado's Department of Transportation. Cyberattackers also managed to take down Baltimore's 911 services in a ransomware attack in March 2018, while smaller communities like Bingham County, Idaho, and Montgomery County, Alabama, have also had to make tough choices about how to best handle similar attacks. 

SmartShield, the chief product hosted by Tampa-based Centurion Technologies, is a back-up software intended to help large organizations recover data and work around potential ransomware. The company believes that its technology can help organizations skip the steep costs of rebuilding computer systems from scratch. 

Peter Spezza, CEO of Centurion Technologies, spoke with LTN about the SmartShield technology. Here's a look at the product:

Who it serves: SmartShield works with workstation-intensive organizations, a common set-up among government agencies, local municipalities, universities and libraries.

What it does: SmartShield is what Spezza called a “reboot-restore technology.”

“What that means is its endpoint protection that creates a virtual space in your hard drive whereby all unwanted changes are wiped away in a reboot,” he explained.

Essentially, SmartShield can cross-reference what's happening on your machine to that virtual space on your hard drive to identify changes to existing files, a common feature of many ransomware attacks. The system then notifies users that there is a potential intrusion on their machine and asks the user to restart their machine. Once restarted, the software restores data from that virtual space.

Dealing with shifting threats on a government budget: While anti-virus software has been a popular mainstay of cybersecurity protocol, Spezza noted that ransomware, an increasingly common type of cyberattack, operates a bit differently. While viruses typically attack a machine's operating system, “ransomware goes after your files. It's a data breach,” Spezza said. If ransomware successfully encrypts files on a machine, it can essentially hold the key to decryption for ransom (hence the name).

Even with minute-by-minute data backups, Spezza said ransomware can be a costly issue to deal with. This can be especially troubling for governments, who seem to be fending off an increasing barrage of similar attacks. “You're stuck with having to reformat those computers, usually reload your operating system, reload your software and bring back those files, supposing that you have those backed up in real time,” he noted.

“If you have your data backed up, even to the minute, you don't have to pay the ransom, but it's still a very cumbersome process because you have to have IT professionals come in and you have to get your files back,” Spezza added.