Heightened need for vigilance
Published 7:00 pm Monday, November 25, 2019
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency last week after a cybersecurity attack on government servers.
The state’s cybersecurity response team was activated following the ransomware attack and, thankfully, the state did not lose any data or pay any ransom, according to a news release. The attack prompted an outage of “many state websites and emails due to the state taking extreme emergency protective measures, including shutting down server traffic, to neutralize the attack.”
Edwards said the team of experts worked around the clock to restore online services related to the cybersecurity issue, which affected the Office of Motor Vehicles, Department of Transportation and Development and the Department of Revenue.
“We know that some people may have missed filing deadlines or incurred fees because of the outage, which the emergency declaration allows us to correct so that the members of the public are not penalized unnecessarily,” the governor said.
The state Department of Children and Family Services was also impacted by the attack, tweeting their Child Abuse and Neglect Hotline was down for several hours.
The Louisiana State Police and “several federal agencies” are investigating the attempted attack, Edwards said.
This is the second major ransomware attack Louisiana has been through this year, following one in July that impacted the computer and network systems in three school districts — Sabine, Morehouse and Ouachita.
The message for businesses here is the heightened need for vigilance. Preparing for the future is incredibly important for the prosperity and safety of the people of Louisiana. If we fail to prepare for next time, we are preparing to fail.
