Former NSA hacker weighs in on Augusta’s budget after cyber issues

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - A few city resources are still recovering from the cyber-attack that hit Augusta a month ago.

The city’s last update said all departments are back to normal except for geographic information systems, enterprise asset management, and solid waste.

While updates are coming in by the week, we took a look at how Augusta-Richmond County’s $7.6 million IT budget compares to what other cities spend.

Former NSA hacker, Jake Williams, whose cyber experience also spans decades, says he’s seen companies spend more on IT security than the city does on its IT department.

“Everybody gets religion after an event like this,” he said. “If the IT department had a $7 million budget total for the city of Augusta, I would hazard to say that’s probably small. Probably actually really small.”

We compared Augusta to six cities across the U.S. with similar population sizes around 200,000.

Out of them, Augusta still spends the least percentage of their annual fiscal budget on IT.

Fayetteville, North Carolina for example, has a quarter of the size of Augusta’s annual billion-dollar budget, but spends about the same on IT.

In Columbus, Georgia, with a city budget just above a quarter billion, they spend more than $6.5 million on IT; 1.3 percent higher than Augusta.

Augusta’s annual IT budget still falls below the percentage mark: 0.2 percent compared to Richmond, Virginia, 0.3 percent lower than Des Moines, Iowa, 0.6 percent lower than Montgomery, Alabama, and 1.1 percent lower than Oxnard, California.

While the mayor says Augusta’s cyber issue is not a budgetary problem, he says the city has put in more resources to be prepared, like a system reset, a new monitor system.

He says there will be another update on their progress on Friday.

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