Nearly $7 million in public safety grants have been recently awarded to assist communities, school districts and other state and local government agencies in Massachusetts with cybersecurity needs, including $133,800 to Manchester, Middleton, and Marblehead that, together, had filed a joint application to address local cybersecurity challenges.
The grant will be used for migration to a .gov domain and multi-factor authentication (MFA) for administrative account management in all three communities.
The funding was recently announced by the Office of Grants and Research (OGR) within the state’s Executive Office of Public Safety and Security (EOPSS) as part of the Municipal Local Cybersecurity Grant Program and State Share Cybersecurity Grant Program. Both programs are funded through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Administration (CISA). This year marks the first time these grants have been awarded in Massachusetts.
The joint application for Middleton, Marblehead and Manchester-by-the-Sea was drafted and submitted on the towns’ behalf by the North Shore Regional IT Collaborative. Formed in 2021, the Collaborative takes a regional approach to help address the information technology challenges faced by its member communities, which also include Danvers, Essex, Hamilton, Wenham, and Topsfield.
“We are grateful here on the North Shore for the Municipal Cybersecurity Grant of $133,000 from the Executive Office of Public Safety & Security (EOPSS), said Colby Cousens, Chief Information Officer for the North Shore IT Collaborative. “This funding will help us enhance our cybersecurity measures and support our community IT needs. It is a vital step in securing our digital infrastructure and advancing our mission of providing secure and efficient IT solutions. The support of the Commonwealth is a welcome boost in our efforts to build a standardized and secure collaborative.”
“Given the proven potential for cyberattacks to not only cause disruption, but also serious harm, in our lives, we need to continue to work to ensure that the digital information that we depend on is made secure and safe from threats of all types,” said Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr (R-Gloucester). “These grants will assist the receiving communities and the school to be proactive in developing, identifying, adopting and deploying the most effective tools and methods to protect that information and data.”
“With ever more sophisticated scams, forms of social engineering, and means of cyberattack, it is critical that we properly secure our state and municipal information technology infrastructure,” said Representative Ann-Margaret Ferrante (D-Gloucester). “Implementing multi-factor authentication is a common sense measure that will increase the security of government accounts, protecting residents and taxpayers from those who would seek to steal their data and defraud our cities and towns.”
In addition to the joint grant award, Middleton, Marblehead and Manchester-by-the-Sea will also benefit from a $100,000 grant awarded to the Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical School, which counts all three towns among its 17 member communities.
The Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical School’s grant will help to fund the implementation of MFA. The school reports that it “currently faces significant unmet cybersecurity needs, primarily in the realm of securing access to information systems owned and operated by the District,” the most pressing of which is the implementation of MFA “across all our digital platforms and systems.”
The Massachusetts Cybersecurity Planning Committee, which was formed as a requirement of receiving the federal funding, oversees the two grant programs. Applicants submitted requests for grant funding through a competitive process initiated by OGR earlier this year.
