What happens when a state bans ransom payments and a county then suffers a cyber attack? A North Carolina county is not saying whether the cyber attack they experienced was a ransomware attack, but they are following the state’s guidelines for how they are responding. The Record reports:
A cyberattack on a North Carolina county has forced officials to call in the state’s national guard for assistance.
In a message to residents on Tuesday, Bladen County said it became the victims of a cyberattack last week. The county — tucked in the southern point of the state about an hour away from Wilmington — is home to nearly 30,000 residents.
While the attackers were able to access county data, the attack went beyond information theft.
Ransomware was not mentioned in the notice but the county’s IT staff discovered “irregularities” in their system and called in the North Carolina Joint Cybersecurity Task Force, a team of outside experts from the NC National Guard, the NCLGISA Cybersecurity Strike Team, NC Emergency Management, and the NC Department of IT to launch a forensic investigation and help secure their servers.
Read more at The Record.
