NSA and Silicon Valley are at fault

Florida city fires IT employee after paying ransom demand last week

Officials from Lake City, Florida, have fired an IT employee last week after the city was forced to approve a gigantic ransomware payment of nearly $500,000 last Monday.
The employee, whose name was not released, was fired on Friday, according to local media reports [1, 2], who cited the Lake City mayor.
The city's IT manager is also planning to revamp the town's entire IT department to prevent a similar incident from happening in the future.



Since then, a third Florida municipality was also hit, namely the village of Key Biscayne [1, 2]. Officials reported a Ryuk ransomware infection last week, but they haven't decided yet if they want to pay the ransom demand.
While there are pros and cons to paying a ransom demand, the public and media have turned on city officials who fail to secure networks and then decide to pay hackers.
Paying ransom demands is now viewed as a sign of a city administration's failure and weakness, rather than a quick fix to get access back to citizens' data, and most likely a reason why Lake City officials fired one of their IT staff, as a sign that they are serious about improving their IT security posture.

Both NSA and Google want security compromised so they can scan through our stuff. 

The cities in Florida and elsewhere can demand an AppleID solution, with biometrics to secure data cheaply.  So, they have a choice, demand security and get the NSA involved, or else any employee with a grudge can introduce a virus and cause a half million in costs.  Either the IT managers and city officials get a clue of  get out of the business.