The City of New Orleans suffered a major cyber attack last Friday that left a string of public services impacted over the weekend, forcing the city's Mayor, LaToya Cantrell, to declare a state of emergency.
City workers were forced to unplug machines on Friday morning after the attack was detected. In a press conference hosted that after, city officials claimed that there was no official network compromise. However, Mayor LaToya Cantrell tweeted over the weekend that the city was "actively involved in recovery efforts."
Several of the city's services are still impacted by this attack, including emergency medical services, the police department, health department, the courts, sanitation, the tax office, and the neighborhood engagement office.
The police department is currently unable to run background checks, non-emergency medical responses are delayed, and municipal and traffic courts are closed today. The city's also warned that healthcare workers are experiencing limited connectivity and availability, and no computerized searchers are available for job hunters.
Lousiana has been on the receiving end of several ransomware attacks this year. So much so that Louisiana Governor John Del Edwards was forced to declare a state of emergency after suffering an attack that left 10% of the state's computer network servers damaged. More than 1,500 of the state's 30,000 computers were also damaged as a result of the attack.
That being said, Edwards also created the state's Cyber Security Commission as a result of these attacks which is designed to prepare for and help local governments respond to cyber attacks.
New research from Emisoft claims that over 100 US federal, state and municipal government agencies have been struck by ransomware this year. NNT provides a suite of products to several government agencies, ensuring that systems and technologies can demonstrate compliance and achieve regulatory requirements for CIS, NIST, SCAP, and more.
Our SecureOps™ suite also continuously monitors in real-time for any changes to the integrity of your systems with the ability to integrate with security and ITSM solutions to reduce security risk and increase service availability.
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