It’s getting hard to keep track of how often Georgia’s been hit with ransomware in the past 14 months or so. The most recent slap: attackers preyed on the Georgia Department of Public Safety (DPS), according to Government Technology Magazine.
The DPS encompasses agencies including the Georgia State Patrol, Georgia Capitol Police and the Motor Carrier Compliance Division, which carries out safety inspections. Chief Information Security Officer David Allen told the magazine that his staff noticed the attack early Friday morning after some network resources and communication systems went wonky. Chief Technology Officer Steve Nichols said that the DPS was forced to bump all servers offline while the Georgia Technology Authority investigates the attack. That includes email servers and those that support the department’s public website and backend. Nichols said: As soon as they saw what was happening [Friday morning] they took all the servers offline across their entire infrastructure.
As of Monday, Government Technology was reporting that Georgia’s DPS hadn’t found evidence of sensitive data being compromised in the attack. State troopers are having to resort to old-school law enforcement, though, said Nichols: If a trooper is out on a highway writing a ticket, for example, they might be doing it with a pen and paper instead of a tablet. Or, if they’re looking up a license plate, they would radio it into a dispatcher instead of using a tablet. As well, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, Georgia State Police, Georgia Capitol Police and Department of Motor Vehicle Safety have all had to switch to an older radio and phone system.
