The City continues to repair the damage caused by last November’s cyber attack that knocked the municipal I-T network offline. The ransom ware attack hit November 13th. City officials refused to meet the ransom demands and opted instead to rebuild an upgraded and more secure network.
Most services have been fully restored – but – there are still some pieces of the puzzle remaining. Fixes for two of those pieces have been approved by Common Council.
The first is an overhaul of the security camera installation at the Peel Plaza parking garage in the uptown area. Atlantic Alarm and Sound has been awarded the $63,855 plus HST contract. The other is a contract for restoring of some software applications and backup data. That $13,560 plus HST contract has been awarded to Esri Canada.
The total cost of the network rebuild is in the 3 million dollar range with most of the costs covered by the City’s insurance policy. The ransom demanded by the cyber attackers was 670,000 in bitcoin currency. At the time of the attack that translated into $17,000,000. Based on the exchange rate at the end of March of this year – it would have amounted to $49,000,000. A police investigation into the attack remains active.
