Howard County Falls Victim To Cyber Attack Yet Again
Indiana’s Howard County has fallen victim to yet another cyber attack, this time kicking the county’s networks offline. Officials have reported it has been days since they’ve been able to be online. However, they are confident the attack did not impact the security of county or employee records.
Howard County was also the victim of a ransomware attack in November, 2016. They reported they did not pay the ransom demands, and opted to restore their network on their own. However, as part of the restoration process, alternative security measures should have been put in place in order to thwart future attacks.
In 2018, PC Matic reached out to Howard County officials with a public record request regarding the name of the security solution the municipality was using pre and post infection in 2016. According to the information provided by officials in December of 2018, the county was deploying Sophos prior to the ransomware attack in 2016. Since, they reported upgrading to Sophos Intercept X.
Unfortunately, this upgrade didn’t prevent another attack.
