JOHNSTOWN – Darren Richards, president of Dynamic Networks, told Johnstown City Council on Tuesday that the Mount Vernon-based company’s computers were hacked, affecting clients including the city of Johnstown.
Only the city’s police department appears to be unable to access all the data, Richards said. He said no ransom was paid or needed to be paid.
Dynamic Networks is the city’s information technology company. Richards said he has 100 to 150 customers in central Ohio. He said the company restored about 60 servers in a matter of days.
“I hate to say it, but one of our systems was hacked, and many of our clients were hacked as a result,” says Richards. “The infected systems are no longer in use. We immediately shut them down. No personal information will be exposed.”
The hack occurred on December 18th and affected many of the company’s clients. Richards said he has been working with the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI since the hack.
“We were able to restore from the last online backup and everything was fine,” Richards told the council. “The Metropolitan Police Department is a bit different. Chief (Abe) Harun[former police chief]prepared everything and said we were fine.”
Richards said the city’s computer systems are backed up in the cloud, but the police department isn’t.
Richards told Police Chief Rusty Smart, “I’ve recovered a lot of your belongings, but I’m not sure if I got everything. We’re still working on it.”
Mayor Sean Stanenart said:
Smart said police station body camera videos are currently not available for download and will soon reach hard drive capacity. He also said the mayor’s court files were affected.
“All that was lost[from the mayor’s court]was the forms we use on a daily basis, but they were accessible from other servers,” says Smart. “I wish I had known at the time that the police weren’t backing it up. We understood that it was.”
Haroon, who now works at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan, said the only things that aren’t backed up in the cloud are video from police car cameras and body cameras.
Haroon said he presented the storage costs to the council because of the cost of backing up video to the cloud, and suggested using mirror drives only for video based on manufacturers’ recommendations. He said there was no monthly fee for Mirror Drive. Ultimately, the city council made the final decision, Haroun said.
Haroun said the mayor’s court records were stored on the city’s servers, not the police.
Johnstown Mayor Donald Bernard has asked Richards to investigate what Johnstown can do to prevent future cyberattacks.
“I think we’re targeted because with the big industrial growth and economic growth, money is supposed to flow into local governments,” Bernard said.
A cyberattack in January 2017 forced the Licking County government to shut down 1,000 computers and phone systems, costing them over $50,000 in overtime and insurance payments.
A computer virus and ransomware claim was discovered on January 31, 2017. The county refused to pay the ransom, and information technology staff that year he worked almost non-stop to get most of the county’s computer systems back up and running by February 16th.
Shutting down the system helped protect data, preserve evidence, and prevent the spread of viruses. Data has been recovered from a backup system. The culprit was never identified.
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