[BreachExchange] Lee County didn’t pay a ransom in cyberattack

[Destry Winant]

https://www.winknews.com/2019/10/01/lee-county-didnt-pay-a-ransom-in-cyberattack/

A Lee County Commissioner has confirmed the county did not pay the
ransom after hackers got into the government’s computer systems.

Nearly two weeks ago, Lee County became a victim of a cyberattack that
forced the county to take internal and public computer systems offline
for days.

While the Lee County IT director won’t reveal much about the Florida
Department of Law Enforcement Case, Commissioner Brian Hamman said,
“No money changed hands.”

That’s good news when it comes to whether anyone’s personal
information was compromised says cybersecurity expert Christian
Wartchow, “So that all of the information, all of the data is backed
up, it takes time to restore all that, but it can be done without
paying a ransom.”

Just because no ransom was paid doesn’t mean ransom wasn’t demanded.

And he agrees with how the county is keeping most of the details private.

“It is most likely a criminal case that’s going to be escalated to
both local, state and federal authorities,” Wartchow said, “So there
are certain aspects of it that you don’t want to talk about.”

Wartchow says it’s a balancing act between informing the public and
preventing more attacks.

Commissioner Hamman said he expects the investigation into the
cyberattack to take several months.