The City of Dallas is making some progress in dealing with a ransomware attack that hit city computer systems last week. The main city website and the website for the Dallas Police Department are both back online.
"We know there are questions about how long it will take to fully restore services, but the answer to that question is dependent upon what we find as we scour our environment, review our devices and applications, and complete that process of re-imaging them or replacing them as necessary," said City of Dallas Chief Information Officer Bill Zielinski. He made a presentation to a Dallas City Council committee on Monday.
The main computer-aided dispatch system for the city's 9-1-1 call center has been restored. However, dispatchers are still using the backup system involving radios and cell phones to distribute information to police officers and firefighters. There are about 1,900 mobile data terminals in Dallas police cars and fire trucks that also need to be checked for any ransomware before they are placed back on the network.
"We have largely completed the review of all of the mobile devices that are within the vehicles, and we are beginning to turn those on and attach them to the network. At that point we will have full and complete dispatch capability to where we have moved wholly away from the manual operations," Zielinski said.
The city is also reviewing its systems to determine if anyone's personal information was exposed as part of the ransomware attack.
Zielinski acknowledged during Monday's briefing that some people might want to city to simply pay the ransom to the hacker group, known as "Royal", to resolve the problem.
"The city is exploring all options to remediate this incident," he said. "However, this is an ongoing criminal investigation. The City can not comment on specific details related to the method or means of the attack, the mode of remediation, or potential communications with the party launching the attack."
Council Members publicly praised the city's information technology team for its efforts to restore city services, but also expressed an interest in seeking ways to minimize the harm from any future attack.
"This event underscores the need for our city to address the long-standing under-investment in I-T, and possibly even look at how we structure I-T," said Council Member Cara Mendelsohn. "We seem to have a lot of instances with public safety, and it may need to be that that's separated. I hope we'll begin to look at that after we recover from this incident."
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