One hack happening doesn't raise awareness for the risk of different unknown vulnerabilities in different software. So the total number of institutions getting

One hack happening doesn't raise awareness for the risk of different unknown vulnerabilities in different software. So the total number of institutions getting hacked would be the same. It's not really one system. It just looks like that because it's one news story. If instead, all school districts were hacked this year and all police departments next year, how is that any better than both together? If it was one system like one network, your idea is even worse because having more different software increases the attack surface so hacking any one of those compromises the whole system. Would you personally use uncommon software to avoid being part of a big hack like this? I don't think that's a valid way of protecting yourself. Your idea would make sense if many of these institutions were just providing services that were redundant with each other. Then if some of them are disabled, the others can take their place. But a police department's email server can't do the job of a school district's one. And if confidential information is taken in a hack, redundancy doesn't help at all.