#school | #ransomware | What towns and cities must do to confront the ransomware epidemic | Opinion

#school | #ransomware | What towns and cities must do to confront the ransomware epidemic | Opinion

By Diane Reynolds, Bradford Meisel, and Rick Gideon, Jr.


America’s city and local governments are under attack from ransomware, which disables entire computer system networks until the victim pays a ransom in cryptocurrency, and the results have been catastrophic. On Dec. 13, New Orleans suffered a ransomware attack that forced all city servers to shut down and Mayor LaToya Cantrell was forced to declare a State of Emergency. This was just the latest in a long string of devastating ransomware attacks targeting local governments in cities as well as smaller municipalities and school districts across the United States.


In May of 2019, Baltimore suffered a ransomware attack that cost the city approximately $18 million in remediation costs and left the city unable to close real estate purchases or process water bill payments for over two weeks. In March of 2018, the Atlanta suffered a ransomware attack that could reportedly cost taxpayers up to $17 million. On Nov. 23, 2019, the Livingston School District suffered a ransomware attack that disabled the district’s computer systems and delayed classes.


Although the FBI and the United States Conference of Mayors have warned against paying ransom demands, in part because paying such demands will encourage hackers to strike again, many municipal governments have paid hackers’ ransoms in order to avoid lengthy system outages, even though regaining access to the data does not necessarily close the door the hackers used to access it in the first place.


For example, Jackson County, Georgia paid $400,000 in ransom and Riviera Beach, Florida paid over $600,000 in ransom after ..

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