Kansas riskiest state for cybercrime for third year in a row

TOPEKA (KSNT) – Cybersecurity company SonicWall has found Kansas to be the riskiest state in terms of malware for the last three years running.

SonicWall has 1.1 million security sensors in 215 countries that monitor malware and data from tens of thousands of firewalls and email security devices. In the first six months of 2023, SonicWall recorded 3.7 trillion intrusion attempts. In 2023, North America had the highest total volume of attacks with 2.5 billion, a 26% decrease from 2022, according to the 2023 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report.

In 2023, SonicWall sensors registered 12,732,826 total malware hits in the Sunflower State. According to the 2023 SonicWall Cyber Threat report, 12.6% of SonicWall sensors detected a malware attempt for Kansas. Malware attempts in Kansas have been steadily declining since 2020 when registered malware attempts were at 26.7% and 21.4% in 2022. On the other end, Maine registered the lowest amount of malware attempts at 7.4%, according to the report.

On July 13, 2021, Governor Laura Kelly formed the Governor’s Cybersecurity Task Force with the intent to protect Kansas’ digital infrastructure. The Cybersecurity Task Force has outlined the following governance strategies:

risk identification and mitigation.

strategy and planning.

exchanging cyber threat information.

developing an incident response plan.

identifying needed budget and resources.

expanding workforce development and education.

Cyber threats are an increasingly unpredictable, dangerous, and proliferating hazard to state, local, and tribal governments, as well as private industry and operators of critical infrastructure systems within the State of Kansas. Every day, networks are under attack across the state from a variety of sources, using a variety of methods, all of which are growing in sophistication.

From the Kansas Cybersecurity Task Force Final Report for Dec. 2021