ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on one of the most critical responsibilities all public managers share – protecting the digital infrastructure at all levels of government. It examines the critical importance of what public managers can and must do to protect our nation's digital information infrastructure. Cyber security begins with awareness and human error continues to be the number one cause of cyber incidents – either through ignorance or carelessness. Cybersecurity has become the term of choice to describe the overarching focus on securing all aspects of the digital infrastructure. It expands the definition of what had been simply referred to as network security. The fear of a cyber event is real and growing while the numbers are staggering in both size and scope and do not separate state and local governments who share a huge uptick in reported cybercrime cases. State and local governments are not immune to cyber-attacks, in fact in many ways they are more vulnerable.
