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Pensacola to pay for ID monitoring for 60, 000 people following cyberattack
From: Destry Winant <destry () riskbasedsecurity com>
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2019 10:17:20 -0500
https://www.pnj.com/story/news/2019/12/23/pensacola-pay-id-monitoring-60-000-people-following-cyberattack/2735249001/ Pensacola is offering to pay for identity protection monitoring for up to 60,000 people following a cyberattack on the city's systems earlier this month. Pensacola Mayor Grover Robinson said he made the decision after talks with Deloitte, the international professional services company the city hired for $140,000 to perform an audit of the city's cybersecurity and review how the cyberattack occurred. "At this particular time, we don't know if any of our sensitive data got out, but we do know that there is some data that was acquired by the people that hacked us," Robinson said. Robinson said the city will send out notifications to those who may have had data exposed, which could include active city employees, pensioners, active customers with online accounts with the city or Pensacola Energy and housing clients. The list is estimated at 60,000 people, Robinson said. "These are our most important people, our employees are active customers, our pensioners, our housing clients, we felt like we needed to protect them," Robinson said. Robinson said the city had no evidence that anyone's personal information was compromised, but he made the decision to notify people because he believed it was the right thing to do. "We don't want anybody to feel like there's something unsafe here with the city of Pensacola," Robinson said. "We believe that those things weren't broken into, but we won't know that for a couple more weeks. We do know that some information was obtained by the individuals (attackers)." The cost for the identification monitoring will be between $150,000 to $180,000, which will be paid out of the city's self-insurance fund, Robinson said. Notifications will be sent out via mail no later than Jan. 5, city spokeswoman Kaycee Lagarde said. The city was hit by what is known as a ransomware attack in the early hours of Dec. 7. Ransomware is a type of software that infects computers by encrypting data and prevents access until a ransom is paid to the attackers. City IT staff shut down the city's computer network to prevent the attack from spreading, which shut down online services and the city's phone and email systems for several days. The city has been able to restore its systems, but IT staff had to screen each individual city-owned computer to ensure it was free on the ransomware before reconnecting it to the network. Governments have become an increasing target of ransomware groups with 103 state and municipal governments and agencies attacked by ransomware in the U.S. in 2019 alone, according to a report from the cybersecurity company Emsisoft. A cybercriminal group known as Maze is claiming to be behind the attack on the city and has threatened to publish private data if a ransom is not paid. A county email with a briefing from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement released a few days after the attack also tied the attack to the Maze group. The group created a public website last week listing the city and at least 20 other organizations it has attacked who don't "wish to cooperate with us and trying to hide our successful attack on their resources." Brett Callow, a spokesman for Emsisoft, told the News Journal there is no way to know for sure if the group claiming the attack are the actual attackers, but said the public list revealed a previously undisclosed attack on a Canadian company, Andrew Agencies. The company acknowledged the attack occurred to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation after the list was published. _______________________________________________ BreachExchange mailing list sponsored by Risk Based Security BreachExchange () lists riskbasedsecurity com If you wish to Edit your membership or Unsubscribe you can do so at the following link: https://lists.riskbasedsecurity.com/listinfo/breachexchange
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- Pensacola to pay for ID monitoring for 60, 000 people following cyberattack Destry Winant (Dec 24)