Colorado Department of Transport which experienced a SamSam Ransomware attack in February this year has announced that it has recovered from the attack 80% but at an estimated cost of $1.5 million.
The officials of the Colorado transport department also confirmed that at any point they haven’t caved into the demands of the ransomware attackers. But depending on the backups to recover their data.
The Colorado National Guard was pressed into service to investigate, contain and recover from the attack which did consume time and additional resources.
At the start of the recovery, only 25 IT teams were pressed into service. But later the demand ballooned to 150 during the peak days of incident ie from March 2-9th.
Brandi Simmons, a spokesperson for Colorado Officer of Information Technology confirmed the news and said that the million dollar estimate includes overtime pay costs and some other unanticipated expenses.
Coming to the news of data loss, Brandi disclosed that most of the data were saved by the new backup plan. But the data on employees computers couldn’t be recovered.
In another news related to Ransomware Attack, Atlanta water department made it official that it is pulling down its website for maintenance and updates until further notice. So, from now on, those using or planning to use the services on the website of ‘The Department of Watershed Management’, the service will be unavailable for two full weeks. In this incident, the malware spreading hackers is said to have demanded $51,000 to decrypt the database of Atlanta government.
