A county with a dozen separately governed offices on one network, a village with no IT staff, and a circuit clerk running systems the public depends on all face the same constraint: security work has to fit an annual budget, sometimes supplemented by grants, and it has to be defensible to an auditor and an insurer.
First: identity
Most incidents begin with a credential, not an exploit. Multi-factor authentication on email, remote access and administrative accounts removes the largest single category of risk and costs less than nearly anything else on the list. Insurers increasingly require it before they will write a policy.
Second: recovery you have actually tested
For a public agency, the realistic worst case is ransomware during a filing deadline or an election cycle. Backups must exist outside the reach of production credentials, and a restore must have been performed rather than assumed. Recovery is a security control, not an IT chore.
Third: segmentation
Public safety, court, election and general office systems should not share one flat network simply because they share one building. Segmentation limits how far an incident travels and is usually achievable with equipment already in place.
Fourth: detection someone watches
Endpoint protection that generates alerts nobody reads is not detection. Managed detection and response puts those alerts in front of people whose job is to act on them, at hours when an agency has no staff on site.
Fifth: write it down
Auditors, insurers and grant programs all ask the same question: what controls are in place and who verified them. Documentation produced alongside the work costs far less than documentation reconstructed afterward.
References to government agencies and cybersecurity organizations describe experience coordinating with those entities on behalf of clients and do not imply endorsement, sponsorship, certification or formal partnership unless expressly stated.