Indiana’s Madison County is going on Day 5 of a ransomware nightmare. According to Madison County police, both first responders and civic officials are logging all calls for service by hand. Anderson Police, the Madison County Jail and the county court systems are locked out. “We cannot query old information to bring up prior reports or prior court records,” said Madison County sheriff Scott Mellinger, “If we want to bring somebody’s record up for something in the future, let’s say for somebody that has been arrested or somebody who is even in jail then we cannot look up information that would help us at a hearing. On the sheriff’s office side, we cannot book people into jail using the computers. We are using pencil and paper like the old days.” The IT department worked around the clock to recover files, while officers work to track down who is responsible for the attack. The only good news is that officials do not believe that people’s personal or payment information is at risk for this event.
Link: http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/madison-county-faces-day-5-of/
Brent Easley says
Good article. They say spare no expense when it comes to security, but I wonder what kind of IT budgets these small police departments have to help them get the tools they need to keep these type of things from happening.
Loi Van Tran says
I thought the article was interesting and did a little research on the end result. Turns out that they end up paying $28,000 to get there files decrypted and an additional of $17,500 for expert support to get their systems back online. For a small police station that is probably a hefty price tag. It goes to show that people simply do not understand the seriousness of cyber security until it happens to them.