BOSTON – This week, the Baker-Polito Administration announced the second round of award recipients for the Municipal Cybersecurity Awareness Grant Program. Over 44,000 municipal and public school employees from 107 local government organizations across the Commonwealth will receive critical training to better detect and avoid cyber threats.

Locally, the Towns of Cohasset, Duxbury, Norwell, and Scituate were selected in this round and will collectively be able to train 2,120 employees. The Towns of Marshfield, Scituate, and Weymouth were a part of the first round of funding that was announced at the end of 2019.

“As cyber threats continue to become more complex, this type of training for those in local government and in our public schools is critical to protecting sensitive and valuable data,” said Senator Patrick O’Connor (R-Weymouth). “I appreciate the investment the Baker-Polito Administration has made in this area, at all levels of government, and look forward to continuing to expand these types of opportunities moving froward.”

Identified by the National Governors Association (NGA) as “the single most effective factor in preventing security breaches and data losses,” this critical cybersecurity awareness training will provide online end-user training and cyber threat simulations to further educate municipal and public school employees participating in the program. The grant program is managed by the Executive Office of Technology Services and Security (EOTSS) and is funded with $250,000 of capital IT authorizations from Governor Baker’s General Governmental Bond Bill, which the Legislature passed into law in 2020 to invest in Commonwealth cybersecurity and IT infrastructure modernization initiatives.

Building off of the first-ever Municipal Cybersecurity Awareness Grant Program announced at the end of 2019, this new grant round will provide updated training for both municipalities and school districts who participated in the previous round as well as those new to the program. The online training materials provided to municipal and public school employees includes a variety of cybersecurity attack simulations that reflect malicious luring techniques commonly used by cyber criminals to gain access to IT systems and data:

• Email phishing attacks
• ‘Smishing’ SMS attacks
• USB drop attacks
• Link-based, attachment-based, and data-entry attacks

“In addition to providing training to the Commonwealth’s state workforce, we are thrilled to extend this vital training to our partners in local government,” said Secretary of Technology Services and Security Curt Wood. “Building a culture of cyber awareness, local governments can grow their security teams to be the responsibility of all employees.”

See below for more detailed information regarding the first and second rounds of funding for this program.

1^st Round of Funding – December 2019

2^nd Round of Funding – February 2021

For more information on the Municipal Cybersecurity Awareness Grant Program, visit the grant homepage.