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Members of the General Assembly rolled out a package of bills to offer more protections to state and local government online networks on Wednesday following the discovery of myriad vulnerabilities in the state鈥檚 cybersecurity systems.
鈥淰ulnerabilities in our IT systems will continue to cost our taxpayers and that cost is high,鈥� House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones (D-Baltimore County) said at a House news conference Wednesday.
Del. Patrick G. Young Jr. (D-Baltimore County) and Sen. Katie Fry Hester (D-Howard) co-chaired the Maryland Cybersecurity Council鈥檚 Ad Hoc Committee on State and Local Cybersecurity, which聽聽the state鈥檚 technological failings and researched methods other states have taken to increase their security.
Young and Hester, who also co-chair the Joint Committee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Biotechnology, are co-sponsoring the package of bills.
Young said Wednesday that cybersecurity is an issue the state needs to tackle head-on 鈥渂ecause this isn鈥檛 a theoretical exercise and a theoretical threat.鈥�
鈥淲e are past day zero; we have already been attacked at the state level, at the local level,鈥� he continued.
In the past several years, Maryland has been subject to a series of cyberattacks, including attacks against Baltimore City, Baltimore County Public Schools and most recently the聽.
Hester said that the repair effort for the Department of Health鈥檚 network will cost $50 million.
The package includes聽听补苍诲听, which would require the Maryland Department of Emergency Management to help local governments prepare for the possibility of an attack. It would also create the Local Cybersecurity Support Fund to help smaller governments upgrade their security systems.
听补苍诲听, would create a funding mechanism to modernize all of the state鈥檚 legacy IT systems.
The bill initially called for $1.5 billion in bond funding from the Maryland Stadium Authority to upgrade the systems, but Young said the bill is being amended to find another source. Hester said modernizing the Department of Health鈥檚 legacy system alone will cost about $2 billion. She said that they hope to identify a new source of revenue within the next year.
听补苍诲听, would centralize all IT systems among state agencies to be under the purview of the Department of Information Technology. It would also require all state and certain local agencies to undergo annual security assessments and create new offices to assist local governments to bolster their cybersecurity systems.
Hester said that legislators have gotten pushback from some state agencies about this policy, 鈥渂ut the ones that are pushing back have major infractions in terms of their audit reports and the security of their personally identifiable information.鈥�
According to Hester, the Maryland Department of Transportation asked to be excluded but was reported to have had over 10 million pieces of personally identifiable information not properly secured.
鈥淲e鈥檙e more connected now than we鈥檝e ever been,鈥� Young said. 鈥淏ut while we embrace innovation, we must also recognize the risks that come with it, and make sure that we鈥檙e modernizing our cybersecurity posture to protect our infrastructure, essential services 鈥� and the data and privacy of Maryland citizens.鈥�
