Mower County officials give an update on their efforts to restore their systems
(ABC 6 News) – Mower County officials are still cleaning up the mess left after last month’s ransomware attack.
The extent of the attack is unclear as well as what systems were impacted, but county officials say they are working diligently to restore everything.
RELATED: Mower County still working to restore systems after cyber attack
All the cleaning up in store begs the question, how do organizations like Mower County get hacked in the first place? Sai Huda, CEO of CyberCatch and cyber security expert said hackers seek easy targets.
“They’re really looking at who is having a weak defense system, so they’re now doing scans with AI and so those scans give the attacker a quick view of what kind of organization has a weak defense system,” Huda said.
The ransomware attack has been on the minds of several people across Mower County as ABC 6 recived several requests urging the news team to dig into the issue.
Bridgid Kelly lives in Mower County and said just a few weeks ago she was not able to look up her own property information on the county’s geographic information hub a few weeks ago to find the square footage of her own home.
RELATED: Real estate market on hold as Mower County grapples with effects of ransomware attack
“When I went on, I realized it would not let me access the property data of anything and the site was down.”
Mower County administrator Matthew Verdick issued a statement Thursday in which he said…
“County IT and leading cybersecurity and forensic teams continue working to test and securely recover systems impacted by the recent ransomware attack. Thanks to their hard work we are happy to let Mower County residents know that our records system for running property searches is operational on site. We are continuing with a phased approach to bringing systems back to full functionality so there still may be some delays in processing your requests. We remain committed to minimizing the impact on residents doing business with the County. We are incredibly grateful for our community’s patience and the efforts of our IT team.”
As county officials work to resolve the ransomware attack, Huda said people can update their passwords as one means of protecting your data.
“Don’t use the same password for a bunch of applications, try to have a unique password, number one. Don’t use any dumb passwords like one, two, three four, five,” Huda said.
ABC 6 asked Mower County staff what are all the services that were affected and if they have a timeline for when everything will be back up. County staff responded saying they will have more information on Monday.
