DailyPost 2885
THE HAMILTON STORY – WHAT A HACK COSTS TO THE VICTIM
Just show the prospect of a project to an IT company and then see the pace with which they get in commercial rigmarole of effort and time, the level of expert resources to be deployed, timelines and finally the costing. The costing mostly comes out as a nightmare to the customer. In a similar vein our city governments, inclusive of what we call as the urban local self-governments are pretty well versed in how to tax the citizens, to take care of their expenditure. They also know how to account for the exigencies. But no more, a hack can put you at your wits end, financially and otherwise.
We have heard of the woes of IT, critical infrastructure and other companies ending up paying ransom, in what is termed as ransomware attacks, when you are unable to use your own data and the company’s operations come to a standstill. Now the same has hit the city councils too. Besides the ransom paid or even otherwise, there are lots of expenses that crop out of nowhere, once you are hacked. The city of Hamilton faced a crippling ransomware attack in the month of February this year. They have now revealed that they have spent more than $7 million to repair its information technology systems after the above mentioned attack.
Maybe they have just reached the mid-way of the recovery phase. It is said that the city cyber attackers were well funded and organized, experts say It will take years to recover.
The ransomware hacks are very complex and at times can turn out to be intractable, besides the imminent financial drain. The city was caught up on its backlog of vendor payments with Deloitte’s help as the vendor payment system was affected by the hack. The city had spent $5.7 million on the recovery efforts till May 28, 2024 and currently stands at $7.4 million. The spent so far has been $4.8 million on external experts, $1.1 million on infrastructure, $1.0 million on staffing and $2.8 million on “other related costs.”
Without any description or explanation, “other related costs,” will continue to be intriguing. While spending continues on the recovery efforts, the director has confirmed that all city procedures have been followed, including the procurement policy, while making the expenditure mentioned above. The ransomware attack shut down all city lines and completely paralyzed city council’s operations, yet they decided not to pay ransom and rebuild its systems. The city council has not revealed the amount of ransom demanded. It has been a welcome approach. Resilience will always remain the key to usher in robust IT systems.
RANSOM SHOULD BE BANNED AS A POLICY, BUT THE GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO EQUIP ITSELF TO BE AN EFFECTIVE FIRST RESPONDER TO START WITH.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.