CITY OF MESA
“ A SMART CITY IS NOT ONLY INNOVATIVE BUT ONE THAT IMPLEMENTS AND DOES THE THINGS THAT OTHERS ONLY DREAM”
Scott Conn CIO City of Mesa
cyberattack world are caused by a human clicking on the wrong thing,” Scott says.
“ So, the first line of defence is always going to be the human layer and that requires people to be educated about the different types of attacks out there.
“ We are very big on city staff education and we monitor the training modules that are taken. Typically, we will put out eight training modules per year and KnowBe4 is our vendor for that.”
Thanks to this rigorous training, Mesa’ s phishing failure rates have plummeted compared to national averages.
“ We’ re down in the single digits these days, between 2 % and 6 %, whereas most cities are in the 15 % to 20 % range,” Scott says.“ It’ s not perfect, but it’ s better than most.”
68 September 2026