The city and county governments in Dallas grappled with cyberattacks this year. On November 8th, Dallas City Council approved two measures amounting to approximately $2.7 million to strengthen the city's IT security while officials in Dallas County are probing last month's cyberattack that may have resulted in data leak. The Dallas Morning News reported this development.
To enhance its IT security, the city of Dallas has invested millions in various measures since April, thanks to the Dallas City Council. One of them is a four-year $2.2 million agreement with Netsync Network Solutions to help the city purchase equipment to monitor and manage network security. The tecnhology currently in use will continue, but the focus will be on improving traffic detection and response time to threats, as covered by The Dallas Morning News.
A second agreement, running for three years and exceeding $510,000, will bolster the city's security with a cloud-based security software. This extra layer will protect online transactions, websites, and communications from possible breaches, as stated in the city's documents.
Eearlier this year, hackers broke into the city's system and perpetrated one of the biggest breaches, downloading 1.2 terabytes of data over a month. Several servers were taken offline, and essential city services were interrupted. The Dallas Morning News has reported that it took city IT workers months to restore the system. The ransomware group Royal has been blamed for exposing sensitive information of over 30,000 people, prompting the city to offer free credit monitoring for the aggrieved for two years.
In the light of the recent cyber incident, it has become increasingly critical that the city of Dallas doubles down on its cybersecurity efforts to prevent future attacks. Dallas' recent IT security investment demonstrates the city's resolve to confront existing vulnerabilities and protect its digital infrastructure.
Simultaneously, Dallas County is contending with its own cybersecurity predicament. On October 30th, county officials said that a breach was detected 11 days earlier. Investigations are underway into the ransom demands of the hacker group Play and their alleged publication of stolen data. There's no news yet of any payment to resolve the matter as of November 10th.
Murat Kantarcioglu, a cybersecurity expert at the University of Texas, Dallas, confirmed the authenticity of the cyberattack by acknowledging the discovery of legitimate court files and arrest records on the dark web. According to The Dallas Morning News, Kantarcioglu stated, "The attack was real" and "these are legitimate files."
