Published February 19 2026
Keeping up with the rapidly evolving landscape of cybersecurity threats can be difficult for rural Montana counties, said Rick Hancock, IT Director for Ravalli County. Between budgetary constraints, growing prices and limited numbers of staff, he said that obtaining the tools needed to keep key county resources, including voter data, law enforcement tools and county funds, is a challenge.
However, he said that the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program (SLCGP) provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and administered in Montana by the University of Montana Center for Cybersecurity Workforce and Rural Policy is helping fill the gaps by providing funding and support to rural counties to help them obtain new, more advanced, cybersecurity tools and plan for future threats.
The challenge for rural Montana counties starts with budgets, Hancock said. Ravalli County has about 44,000 residents, spread across 10 cities, towns and census-designated places and eight unincorporated communities. However, Hancock said that the county lacks the large stores and industries of nearby Missoula County, meaning that the county’s property tax collections are relatively low. Combined with the many needs that rural counties need to meet, these low revenues lead to counties like Ravalli having relatively limited funds for cybersecurity resources and IT staff.
Another root of the challenge is in the pricing and audience for leading cybersecurity tools, Hancock said. Many leading cybersecurity tools, such as endpoint monitoring tools like SentinelOne, are extremely expensive for counties and other local governments, he said. While part of this is due to the quality and complexity of the services offered, Hancock said that the issue extends deeper.
Most of these services are primarily targeted for large corporations and other companies, he said, with government clients being a secondary consideration. Corporate clients have much larger budgets than local governments and can generate more revenue through raising prices, something which local governments cannot do. Tools marketed towards higher-income companies are outside of the price ranges that local governments can afford, not only because local governments have limited resources but because the tools are fundamentally not designed to meet their needs or expectations.
Further, Hancock said, the marketplace of cybersecurity solutions targeted towards local governments is not robust, with relatively few tools built with the needs and budgets of these governments in mind. This forces local governments to rely on tools priced and designed for commercial outlets since appropriate alternatives are largely unavailable.
Hancock said that rapid growth in much of rural Montana is further exacerbating the challenges of affording cybersecurity tools. As counties grow, the need for services like road maintenance and emergency services increases. Additionally, Hancock said that many incoming residents are used to higher levels of service than many counties typically provided, further adding to the demand. The growth in needs for services further strains county budgets, reducing their ability to spend more on keeping up with cybersecurity threats.
The SLCGP grant program run by FEMA and administered by individual states helps fill these gaps in funding and allows local governments to obtain the cybersecurity tools and training needed to keep them and their residents secure. In Montana, the grant program provides a variety of resources and options, covering training, professional development and protection from cyber threats.
For training, the program offers several options for security awareness training for non-technical employees, including licenses for cybersecurity education platform KnowBe4 that county staff can use to design and support staff education programs or curated cybersecurity education for smaller counties provided by the CyberMontana Security Awareness Training program. Training also covers professional development options for IT staff, including vouchers for training courses offered by the SANS Institute and a variety of training vouchers for other platforms, including CompTIA and ISC2, provided by CyberMontana.
The SLCGP also offers support for three different groups of services to boost protection from cyber threats. For endpoint detection and response, the SLCGP offers funding for licenses for SentinelOne, a service which collects endpoint activity data and offers 24/7 managed detection and response to threats, in addition to other services.
Network traffic monitoring is also supported by the SLCGP, including monitoring by CIS Albert Sensors, which is subsidized by the grant, and PISCES monitoring, which is free traffic monitoring for small public organizations. Over 2025, the 14 Albert Sensors supported by the SLCGP across Montana detected 169 suspicious actions and potential threats, with 128 meriting an email to the sensor’s user to notify them about the threat and two requiring an immediate phone call to the operator. Both services help monitor traffic over local government networks and identify threats, with varying levels of intensity.
Additionally, SLCGP provides funding for programs to enhance the use of multi-factor authentication by local government, including projects to build new multi-factor authentication capabilities or enhance existing ones.
Hancock said that Ravalli County already has a developed cybersecurity system, including robust firewall systems and a centralized system for reporting phishing attempts. This phishing reporting system is bolstered by the SLCGP-funded Phishing Campaign tool provided by KnowBe4, which tests employees’ ability to recognize phishing attempts by sending them simulated phishing emails. Hancock said that the SLCGP has also been valuable to the county in boosting other aspects of its security, particularly its network monitoring. He said that the county was able to use the SLCGP funds to obtain an Albert Sensor for network monitoring last year. This year, Hancock said, the county also intends to use grant funding to upgrade the SentinelOne services it already uses and gain 24/7 endpoint monitoring for county devices and to implement improved multifactor authentication.
He said that these tools will help boost the county’s security capabilities and fill gaps it could not fill otherwise. “It’s a vastly important opportunity for rural communities in Montana to be able to help purchase things that they may not be able to purchase if it wasn’t for the grant,” Hancock said.