After other cities around the country have been shut down by cyber attacks in recent months, the City of Cullman has made a move to shore up its own security of electronic records.

The Cullman City Council approved a resolution during its meeting Monday night to enter into a contract with Tyler Technologies for professional hosting services for its electronic records. 

City IT Director Jacob Smith said the service will host the city’s electronic records off-site, and will provide additional security and redundancy for the records and keep them safe from cyberattacks. 

“We don’t want to be the local municipality that makes it into the newspaper because we had a ransomware attack,” he said. 

A ransomware attack is when a hacker or group of hackers seize control of a computer system and refuse to relinquish that control until they have been paid a ransom.

Council President Jenny Folsom said several cities have been hit with such attacks and have been forced to pay off hackers to get control of their computers, so working with a professional hosting service should help keep Cullman safe from such an attack while keeping costs around the same as when the city was providing its own hosting for the records. 

“This will provide an added layer of security,” she said.