1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

Dear Legislator, I'm writing to ask you to support mandatory cybersecurity training for our state's first responders — police, fire, EMS, and 911 dispatch — rather than leaving it elective. This isn't hypothetical. In the first half of 2026 alone, 187 government entities worldwide were hit by ransomware, and U.S. agencies accounted for nearly a third of those attacks. This year, a cyberattack knocked out Suisun City, California's entire 911 dispatch system, forcing a state of emergency and rerouting calls through a backup center. A separate attack in Coweta, Oklahoma took down city systems entirely; police and fire were spared only because they happened to run on separate infrastructure, not because any policy protected them. Existing training in most states is inconsistent or optional, even though these are the exact agencies our communities depend on in an actual emergency. A single unpatched device or reused password can take an entire dispatch system offline — not because anyone was careless on purpose, but because nobody made basic digital hygiene training a requirement. I'm asking you to support legislation establishing mandatory cybersecurity training standards for first-responder agencies, along with standing infrastructure — such as a Cyber Civilian Corps model — so response and recovery capacity exists before an incident happens, not after. This protects the people protecting us, and it protects every resident who depends on 911 working when they call it. Thank you for your attention to this.