Computer Systems at Roxana Police Department based in Illinois have been hit by Ransomware. And as per our sources, the whole database which stores criminal records, mugshots, and details of the latest crime incidents has been encrypted. However, the chief of the Village’s police department is saying that the organization has an already a Plan B in place to tackle such issues.
As per our sources, the hackers are demanding a sum of 7.6 bitcoins to decrypt the database and that too within a time frame of just one week.
Will Cunningham, the Police Chief at the Roxana Police Department have confirmed that their computer systems were hit with Ransomware last week. But at the same time, he assured that all emergency response services will run as usual.
Generally, organizations which are dependent on large volumes of data for core operations are extremely susceptible to hackers. This includes private and public entities such as tax and financial firms. But targeting the data of police departments will not prove lucrative for hackers, as government organizations always have a disaster recovery plan on hand to keep emergency services always active.
In the case of Roxana Police Department, Will Cunningham said that they have all the critical data backed up to a cloud. So, there isn’t much worry on this segment. However, he is more concerned about ransomware issues on the long run.
Very recently, just before the day when the 45Th US President Donald Trump took the oath, the entire CCTV network in Washington DC was taken down by hackers. The department had to delete the data as it was encrypted by malicious software and they were not in a position to pay the ransom for obvious reasons.
Will Roxana Police follow the same…? Only time will say if it had irreplaceable files on hand.
In January this year, The St Louis Public Library chose to wipe off its entire database as hackers encrypted it with ransomware.
Consequently, in many such cases, authorities are showing readiness in losing data, rather than pay to the cyber criminals.
So, is this the only way to deal with the said situation…?
Please share your mind through the comments section below.
