On an ordinary Tuesday morning, the town of St. Marys, Ontario, expected nothing more dramatic than a council meeting and a few pothole complaints. But when the staff arrived at the town hall, nothing worked. Computers were locked by a message none of them had ever seen before. File names were scrambled. Internal directories were unreadable. Even the municipal payment systems were frozen. Within an hour, the town realized it wasn’t facing an IT glitch — it was in the middle of a ransomware attack that would paralyze operations, drain resources, and dominate the attention of every municipal leader for months.
This is the new reality across Canada. Small towns and mid-sized cities — the kinds of places that once believed they were too small to be noticed — are now prime targets for cybercriminals. And when an attack hits a municipality, it doesn’t just disrupt a website or delay an email. It affects water systems, emergency services, licensing offices, public safety, and the trust residents place in their local government. Cybercrime has become the modern-day disaster scenario, and most municipalities are still trying to catch up.
Why Municipalities Are Targeted
Cybercriminals don’t choose victims at random. They go where the doors are unlocked, the lights are dim, and the payoff is fast. Unfortunately, many municipalities fit that description.
Local governments often run on aging technology — systems patched together over decades, relying on outdated software that wasn’t designed to withstand today’s threat landscape. IT teams tend to be small, sometimes consisting of only one or two people covering everything from police systems to recreational facilities. And budgets favour visible services: roads, sidewalks, parks, and community events. Cybersecurity rarely gets the same attention.
But the real reason municipalities are so attractive is the pressure they face during a crisis. When systems go down, local governments can’t wait days or weeks to respond. A city must issue water reports, maintain 911 dispatch, keep payroll running, and support vulnerable residents. Attackers know this. They know that the urgency of community services dramatically increases the chances a municipality will pay a ransom — or at least feel pressure to consider it.
Real Canadian Incidents: The Wake-Up Calls
If there was any doubt that municipalities were on cybercriminals’ radar, the past few years have erased it.
St. Marys, Ontario, became national news after a ransomware attack locked the town out of its systems and forced staff into manual workarounds. Recovery took months and demanded significant financial and operational resources.
Westmount, Quebec, faced a severe attack that compromised internal systems and resulted in a ransom demand. Officials publicly confirmed that their servers had been scrambled and sensitive data was at stake.
Fredericton, New Brunswick, experienced service disruptions after a security incident that forced the city to take parts of its digital infrastructure offline.
Across Canada, from small towns to large urban centres, the story is repeating itself: operational paralysis, exposed data, shaken public trust, and long recovery timelines that pull staff away from their core duties.
But behind every headline is the same lesson — cybercriminals don’t care about population size. They care about opportunity. And right now, municipalities provide plenty of it.
What Happens When a Small Town Goes Offline
Most residents don’t think about the digital systems that support their community — until those systems fail.
When ransomware hits a municipality, the effects cascade quickly. Recreation centres can’t accept payments. Building permits and business licenses grind to a halt. 911 dispatch may experience delays if communication networks are affected. Utility billing systems stop functioning. Staff who rely on digital tools are suddenly forced back to paper, slowing down even the simplest tasks.
A full municipal shutdown might mean public works crews can’t access scheduling systems, emergency alerts may be delayed, and communication with residents becomes limited to social media or old-fashioned bulletin boards. Even the smallest disruption can feel enormous in a closely connected town.
And then there’s the human side: residents grow frustrated, staff become overwhelmed, and elected officials face increasing pressure to explain how this happened — and how it will be prevented next time.
What Local Governments Can Learn
Every municipal cyber incident in Canada, no matter the province or population, carries the same fundamental lesson: cybersecurity is not just an IT function. It is a core operational responsibility that affects every department and every resident.
Municipalities that treat cybersecurity like critical infrastructure — the digital equivalent of clean water or safe roads — are the ones that recover fastest and are least likely to be blindsided.
Another key insight is that backups alone are not enough. Many towns think they’re protected because they have backups stored somewhere on the network. But if those backups aren’t segmented, encrypted, offline, or regularly tested, they may be just as compromised as the primary systems.
Incident response planning is equally essential. A city cannot afford to improvise while under attack. Leaders need pre-planned communication protocols, chain-of-command structures, recovery priorities, and external partners on standby.
And finally, transparency matters. Residents don’t expect perfection, but they do expect honesty. When municipalities communicate openly during a cyber crisis, trust is preserved even amid disruption.
Prevention Starts With the Basics
Protecting a municipality doesn’t require cutting-edge technology or million-dollar budgets. It begins with foundational practices — the cyber hygiene essentials that make it much harder for attackers to gain a foothold.
Regular patching and updates eliminate known vulnerabilities that criminals commonly exploit. Strong password practices and multifactor authentication reduce the risk of compromised accounts becoming access points. Employee training helps municipal staff recognize phishing attempts — still the number one way ransomware enters a network.
Network segmentation, which limits how far an attacker can move once inside, is one of the most effective ways to reduce the severity of an attack. So is mapping out every third-party tool and vendor connection — an overlooked weak point for many cities.
And backups must be more than an IT checkbox. They should be stored separately, tested frequently, and included in municipal emergency planning. A city that can restore its systems quickly is far less likely to consider paying a ransom.
The Budget Challenge: Why Small Towns Struggle
Cybersecurity funding has never been easy for municipalities. When council meetings are filled with debates over road repairs, playground upgrades, and the state of the community pool, cybersecurity can feel abstract. But nothing drains a budget faster than a major ransomware attack.
Recovery can cost hundreds of thousands — sometimes millions — when you factor in new equipment, forensic investigations, overtime, temporary workarounds, lost productivity, and long-term security enhancements.
Talent shortages make the challenge even harder. Small communities often rely on a single IT manager or a small team whose responsibilities extend far beyond cybersecurity. Meanwhile, attackers operate with international networks and fully staffed operations.
But the budget challenge isn’t insurmountable. Some municipalities have already found success by partnering with cybersecurity firms that provide ongoing protection at a fraction of the cost of in-house expansion. Others have shared IT resources with neighbouring towns or leveraged provincial and federal funding programs designed to strengthen public-sector cybersecurity.
Building a Municipality That Can Withstand an Attack
Resilience is not about eliminating risk — it’s about preparing a community to withstand disruption without collapsing.
Municipal leaders can build cyber resilience the same way they prepare for natural disasters or major infrastructure failures. That includes running tabletop exercises so staff know exactly how to respond under pressure, developing continuity plans that include digital outages, and setting clear communication expectations for both internal teams and the public.
It also means fostering a culture where cybersecurity is everyone’s responsibility—not just the IT department’s. From frontline staff to council members, every person plays a role in preventing the next ransomware attack.
Why Protecting Municipalities Protects Communities
When a city becomes the target of a cyberattack, the damage isn’t limited to servers or software. It affects real people — families trying to pay bills, businesses waiting for permits, emergency responders relying on connected systems, and residents who expect their government to function.
Municipalities are the backbone of daily life in Canada. They run the water, maintain the roads, manage emergency services, and keep communities functioning smoothly. When those systems fail, everything else wobbles.
Cybersecurity is no longer optional. It is essential infrastructure. And municipalities that invest in resilience today will protect not just their data, but their people, their reputation, and their future.
At Adaptive Office Solutions, cybersecurity is our specialty. We prevent cybercrimes by using analysis, forensics, and reverse engineering to detect malware attempts and patch vulnerability issues. By investing in multilayered cybersecurity, you can leverage our expertise to boost your defenses, mitigate risks, and protect your data with next-generation IT security solutions.
Every device connecting to the internet poses a cybersecurity threat, including that innocent-looking smartwatch you’re wearing. Adaptive’s wide range of experience and tools fills the gaps in your business’s IT infrastructure and dramatically increases the effectiveness of your cybersecurity posture.
To schedule a Cyber Security Risk Review, call the Adaptive Office Solutions’ hotline at 506-624-9480 or email us at helpdesk@adaptiveoffice.ca