City of Dallas IT staff are still working with consultants and outside groups to help review and clean servers possibly impacted by a May 3 ransomware attack with a focus on restoring systems from public safety departments first, then other public facing agencies and then everything else.
But it’s the restoration of some internal systems described as having background functions that will likely take the longest to complete.
“We are going to be working at this for weeks and months to do all the clean up,” chief information security officer Brian Gardner told The Dallas Morning News.
Gardner and city chief financial officer Jack Ireland said no evidence has been found at this point that data stored by the city of personal information from employees and residents was leaked, nor is there any evidence found that internal data stored, such as police evidence or municipal court files, have been lost. They both said investigations and monitoring are still ongoing.
“We took some things down as precaution, probably more than we needed to, in order to isolate and make sure that it was clean before it was brought back into service,” Ireland said. “So it is taking some time to work through those different systems.”
Ireland declined to say whether the city has issued any ransom, citing an ongoing criminal investigation by the Dallas police and FBI.
“There are things we’re just not able to share because it is an open investigation and a criminal act against the city,” said Ireland, who oversees the city’s information and technology services department.
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