Chenango County invests $200,000 in response to recent ransomware attack
(Photo by Zachary Meseck)
CHENANGO COUNTY – The Chenango County Board of Supervisors recently approved $200,000 to cover the costs of new software after the county’s computers were affected by a ransomware attack.
Chenango County Clerk of the Board RC Woodford said the cyber attack happened on October 18, and while the attackers were requesting approximately $90,000, paying the ransom wasn’t an option.
Woodford said the $200,000 basically covers software upgrades including new Windows 365 software for all 400 of the county’s computers along with some equipment upgrades. He said the annual cost wouldn’t likely be that high.
“After the attack essentially everything was taken offline, servers were scrubbed, and the machines were restored to a usable form,” said Woodford. “We wanted to make sure something like this would never happen again, so immediately after the attack we got a rough estimate together of what it would cost to make sure this isn’t a repeat issue.”
He said licensing requirements that require annual subscriptions will cause this to be an ongoing budget concern, and that some of the $200,000 budget line will be turned into operating costs in the future to keep the computers licensed.
At the November Chenango County Board of Supervisors meeting, Woodford stated he did not know if they would see six figures costs each year due to the upgrades, but there would be an incremental increase versus what they had purchased in the past. He said licenses used to be good for the life of the computer, but now software developers charge annually.
He added that the annual renewal fee never seemed to go down, and that the cost would probably be in the ten of thousands range with having close to 400 PCs.
Chenango County Director of Information Technology Herman Ericksen previously spoke on the ransomware attack explaining that attackers encrypted county files and asked for a ransom to be paid to unlock them.
He said the program requested $450 for each infected machine. He estimated the county operated about 400 computers and at least half of them were impacted.
He added that the county's top priorities in the wake of the cyber attack was to restore affected systems involving key technology infrastructure, election systems and payroll.
Woodford said the attack left computers down for maintenance for weeks, with the majority of the computers back online in late November.
Chenango County Clerk of the Board RC Woodford said the cyber attack happened on October 18, and while the attackers were requesting approximately $90,000, paying the ransom wasn’t an option.
Woodford said the $200,000 basically covers software upgrades including new Windows 365 software for all 400 of the county’s computers along with some equipment upgrades. He said the annual cost wouldn’t likely be that high.
“After the attack essentially everything was taken offline, servers were scrubbed, and the machines were restored to a usable form,” said Woodford. “We wanted to make sure something like this would never happen again, so immediately after the attack we got a rough estimate together of what it would cost to make sure this isn’t a repeat issue.”
He said licensing requirements that require annual subscriptions will cause this to be an ongoing budget concern, and that some of the $200,000 budget line will be turned into operating costs in the future to keep the computers licensed.
At the November Chenango County Board of Supervisors meeting, Woodford stated he did not know if they would see six figures costs each year due to the upgrades, but there would be an incremental increase versus what they had purchased in the past. He said licenses used to be good for the life of the computer, but now software developers charge annually.
He added that the annual renewal fee never seemed to go down, and that the cost would probably be in the ten of thousands range with having close to 400 PCs.
Chenango County Director of Information Technology Herman Ericksen previously spoke on the ransomware attack explaining that attackers encrypted county files and asked for a ransom to be paid to unlock them.
He said the program requested $450 for each infected machine. He estimated the county operated about 400 computers and at least half of them were impacted.
He added that the county's top priorities in the wake of the cyber attack was to restore affected systems involving key technology infrastructure, election systems and payroll.
Woodford said the attack left computers down for maintenance for weeks, with the majority of the computers back online in late November.
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