Imperial County officials to invest in rebuilding network following cyber attack

On April 14, Imperial County was notified that their network had been compromised through a cyber attack.

The county’s information security manager investigated the attack.

The hacker was able to gain access to the county’s network servers through a series of phishing emails sent to various employees.

“Emails were able to get through that had attachments, those attachments were opened and they introduced the malware to our system,” said Ryan E. Kelley, Imperial County Chairman.

“It happened over a period of months, said Kelley.”

The hacker made a ransom demand of $1.2 million dollars in bitcoin to restore the network, a demand Imperial County decided not to pay.

“Regardless we knew we were going to have to make improvements to our network, to prevent this kind of intrusion in the future,” Kelley said.

“We chose not to pay and to build our system to a stronger capability,” Kelley said.

On April 21, the county announced their website was back and running, but was still experiencing some issues.

Imperial County’s cybersecurity firm is continuing to rebuild the county’s network to its potential.

As of now, a total of $1.4 million dollars has been expended to rebuild the network.

Imperial County says their insurance coverage will cover the majority of costs associated with rebuilding the network.

Kelley says no information has been lost through the cyber attack, but they are still investigating to see if there was a breach.