Ransomware Attack on City of Muscatine Shutdown Several Servers

A news release from City of Muscatine tells about one ransomware attack that shutdown many servers of the city but two weeks later officials expressed confidence that they would normalize the situation.

The attack occurred October 17 around 1am when it struck down servers, notably of Muscatine City Hall and Muscom. Immediately cyber security experts and Information Technology Department of the city started work on the ransomware's isolation and removal after which they would reinstate the servers' functioning.

According to Gregg Mandsager, City Administrator, recently officials had decided for incorporating cyber insurance. Considering that ransomware attacks were ever growing, it was decided that they would be proactive and go for an insurance purchase. And so results proved favorable. The insurance firm managed getting extra support for combating the assault. Right now investigation is on, however according to the city authorities, there's no more of the ransomware's problem for it has been eliminated even as system restoration is in progress.

Consequent of quarantining the ransomware, IT staff had to also close the online connection that the different city departments were using. Services over the Net like requesting for permits, making payments to obtain parking tickets, and searching books from a list at Musser Public Library couldn't be acquired while all the work was going on with paper and pencil.

Evidently, outside resources helped the City quarantine the ransomware, load software onto individual workstations which would maintain watch as also report any dubious operation for evaluating the necessary things that would fulfill the restoration task while recommend more measures of cyber security for the systems.

Generally a system requires ten weeks time for complete restoration. While the majority of workstations are back to normal functioning a number of Internet-based services would remain unavailable during the next days.

According to Mandsager, even if the ransom is paid as well as the attackers remove the malware, there's no surety that nothing is still left behind which can become active and cause more damage later.

As per the release, Muscatine City is examining and enforcing extra measures of security even after some of the systems are already restored.

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