IOXO,
today announced CityWRX, an initiative leveraging CloudWRX to provide
increased security and savings for cities, counties and municipalities
("Cities") while freeing them from on-premise IT. CityWRX targets the
malware and ransomware attacks that are crippling U.S. Cities.
The New York Times reported that Baltimore has been paralyzed by a recent attack. Wired reports that
a 52K ransomware attack has resulted in 2.6M in losses to the city.
Other attacks have hit Sarasota, Florida; Englewood, Colorado;
Hinesville, Georgia; Farmington, New Mexico; Cedar Hills, Utah; and
Leeds, Alabama. Security experts advise that since 2017 these types of attacks have hit new highs and are escalating.
Atlanta
lost internal and external applications, freezing city apps for paying
bills and accessing court-related data. Emergency-response services were
affected, forcing 911 dispatchers to resort to paper and pen.
Baltimore's ongoing attack has frozen thousands of computers, shut down
emails and paralyzed real estate sales, water bills and health alerts.
When servers are unavailable, police and fire departments can lose
mobile data and communications grind to a halt. To make matters worse,
city employees must leave computers off until attacks are resolved to
avoid being targets, which compromises services still more.
The
well-being of hundreds of thousands of people are at risk when cities
are attacked with ransomware. Cybersecurity experts advise cities not to
pay ransoms, but many are forced to pay to regain essential services.
For Baltimore, more than three weeks passed since the attack commenced
and it seems unlikely the ransom payment can be avoided. The full
monetary cost of these attacks, in addition to loss of services and
safety, is amounting to millions of dollars and untold hardship on the
citizens these cities serve.
While
the company is not disclosing the growing list of cities requesting
protection, IOXO CEO and Founder David Turcotte reports that seven
cities, so far, have requested an immediate proof of concept of CityWRX.
The company intends to roll out quickly to mitigate the risks for these
cities.
IOXO
moves all computing functions to the Cloud, away from on-premise IT.
On-premise laptops, desktops, networks and servers typically provide the
points of attack. By eliminating these vulnerabilities and adding
redundant, verified back-ups and other technologies from IOXO partners FileShadow and TecServ,
CityWRX brings enterprise grade protections that are typically
available to only the largest municipalities to small and remote cities
for less than they currently pay for substandard security, according to
Turcotte.
Resource
challenged cities get increased protection from hackers with CityWRX
and gain a solution that is easy-to-use and lightning-fast to deploy.
FileShadow adds intuitive migration tools and document management, while
TecServ delivers support for a combined offering available in a single
monthly or annual fee that is often significantly less that current
budgets. In all, the CityWRX initiative allows every city to pay less,
become substantially more secure and add powerful new resources.
IOXO's
proprietary CloudLock replaces desktops and laptops and provides
secure access to city data and resources. If teams want to keep existing
hardware, IOXO's software-only version turns any internet connected
device into a secure workspace. Exposure to cyber security risks can be
mitigated in hours or days, not weeks or months. Even better, cities can
migrate away from threat access points - desktops, laptops and servers -
easily and without trained staff.
Once
migrated, budget savings enable cities to add more security
notifications and protections against users who try to delete email or
transmit protected data. Monitoring can provide warnings about internal
and external bad actors, and IOXO can make best practices compliance
easier. Cost savings are substantial enough to allow cities to add
disaster recovery and business continuity plans that adhere to the newly
required privacy and compliance standards like HIPPAA, HITECH, PCI,
HITRUST, FINRA and SOX.
"Cities
that capitalize on this initiative can leap forward to intelligent
cloud computing and data security, better protections against Ransomware
quickly and easily while reducing their overall IT spend. Making the
leap now is astronomically cheaper than after a city is hit by an
attack," Turcotte said.