The City of St. Albert may look to hire a second cybersecurity analyst to help manage an increased frequency and complexity of threats facing the city, which is "barely" being handled right now, according to the city.
Presented as a business case in the proposed 2023 budget, the city is requesting council's approval for $81,300 in funding for the new position for 2023. The analyst would also be responsible for providing training to other city staff on cybersecurity issues such as phishing.
The new staff position would “address what we're seeing as a growing trend in the volume and complexity of the cybersecurity threats,” the city's senior manager of information technology, Joanne Graham, told councillors on Nov. 3 during a special council committee of the whole meeting.
To date, the city has not fallen victim to any cybersecurity threats or attacks, spokesperson Danelle Boivin confirmed in an email to The Gazette.
"The City of St. Albert has been able to successfully defend against cybersecurity threats from phishing or other attempts,” Boivin said.
"These threats require increased resources to defend against. Therefore, the City of St. Albert is proactively working to minimize risk by adding another dedicated position."
In the business case included in the draft budget, administration noted that many municipalities have been experiencing "steady" increases in the volume and complexity of cybersecurity threats.
In March of this year, the Town of Banff experienced a cybersecurity attack that affected some of the town's non-essential systems such as webcams and the parking permit renewal system. The attack also resulted in personal information on some current and former town employees, residents, and business owners being accessed.
As a result, Banff hired cybersecurity experts from KPMG to assist the town with strengthening its security systems and to investigate the attack. This past summer, Banff town council voted to spend over $600,000 to enhance cybersecurity measures and purchase new software.
Councillors not surprised
Three St. Albert councillors said they weren't surprised to hear from administration that the city is struggling to manage cybersecurity, as an organization like a city is prone to IT threats.
“The city, with its access to private information, I suspect is prone to these sorts of attacks just like individuals are, and so it didn't surprise me that they asked for additional resources,” Coun. Wes Brodhead said in an interview.
“I trust administration when they come forward because they do a real solid triage, if you will, of all the business cases and they only have so much money to spend out of the assessment growth, so they don't attribute money to a new business case lightly,” Brodhead said. “They wouldn't have come to us with this proposal if there wasn't a need."
Coun. Natalie Joly said she is glad that administration is trying to be proactive in managing risk.
“It's absolutely extremely complex running an organization this size and having professionals being proactive is critical to make sure that we're operating as well as we can be,” Joly said.
Coun. Ken MacKay said he was pleased to see one responsibility of the staff position, if approved in the budget, would be training other city staff how not to fall victim to phishing attempts.
"It can happen so simply and easily,” MacKay said.
“If this can prevent that, then I'm certainly for the position considering that it's not really having an impact on the tax rate or the operating plan," MacKay said. He added that it was too early in budget deliberations to say he had made up his mind completely, as the business case could change once council begins budget debate.
Council is scheduled to begin debating the budget on Nov. 29. Residents can give feedback on the proposed budget until Nov. 10 by visiting conversation.stalbert.ca.
