New York City will offer free cybersecurity tools to the public. De Blasio: New Yorkers aren’t safe online. We can’t wait around for others to do something

New York City will offer free cybersecurity tools to the public. It as part of a new effort to improve personal online safety and protections against cyber attacks. The news has been reported by Voice of America (VOA). The program, dubbed NYC Secure, will launch a free smartphone protection app to warn users when suspicious activity is detected on their devices, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced at a news conference. “New Yorkers aren’t safe online. We can’t wait around for other levels of government to do something about it or the private sector,” de Blasio said. The program will cost the city about $5 million per year, he said. “It’s our job in government to make sure that people are safe online. It’s a new reality,” de Blasio said.

New York agencies will also beef up cybersecurity on public Wi-Fi networks by the end of the year

In New York the agencies will also beef up cybersecurity on public Wi-Fi networks by the end of the year. The aim is give better cyber protection to residents, workers and visitors. The networks will be secured with a tool, dubbed Quad9, that is available to anybody in New York City and beyond at https://quad9.net. It’s a user’s web traffic through servers, that identify and block malicious sites and email.

NYC Secure has been unveiled a week after Atlanta ransomware attack. In the city the cyber emergency is not yet solved

The New York public cybersecurity program, NYC Secure, has been unveiled a week after Atlanta was hit with a ransomware attack, that knocked some municipal systems offline. After the cyber incident local authorities, federal agencies and private security firms started to work together to investigate the cause of the malware attack. Meanwhile, Atlanta on Thursday reactivated a website for basic services: indeed, it allows residents to make requests for trash pickup, report traffic signal outages and ask for other public works-related services. But at the moment, Municipal court services remained offline and City Hall employees told Reuters their work computers were still unusable a week after the hack was detected.