Soft Targets: Why Small Municipalities Are Hackers' Favorite Prey

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Presented at BSidesCharm 2026 by

Alton Henley

Small municipalities are ransomware's sweet spot: essential services, political pressure to restore operations, limited IT staff, and budgets that prioritize potholes over patches. While headlines focus on attacks against major cities, it's the towns under 50,000 residents (thousands of them) that attackers quietly exploit. This talk examines why small local governments are disproportionately targeted, what their environments actually look like (spoiler: it's bad), and what a single overworked IT person can realistically do to defend them. Drawing on real incidents and the operational realities of municipal IT, we'll cover practical defensive strategies that don't require enterprise budgets or dedicated SOCs.