Ransomware sends Ohio county emergency services back to pen and paper

Wood County, Ohio, located about 116 miles west of Cleveland, discovered a ransomware attack early Monday morning.

Officials told StateScoop that fire and emergency services, including 911, are still operational, but that the cyberattack disrupted operations at several public safety departments connected to the Wood County Sheriff’s Office computer aided dispatch system, including emergency dispatchers, jails and the Bowling Green Police Division.

In Wood County, which has a population of approximately 130,000 people, emergency dispatchers can take incoming phone calls and communicate with first responders, but are using pen and paper to record calls because they cannot access the county’s records management system, Jeff Klein, director of the Wood County Emergency Management Agency, told StateScoop in a call Tuesday.

Officials in the Bowling Green Police Department are also unable to access some historical police records. Bowling Green is the county seat of Wood County.

“One thing that I would say about Wood County is we have a lot of long-term employees. So when you sit here and say, ‘Oh, yeah, well, we’re going to go back to dispatch pen and paper,’ they kind of chuckle and go, ‘Yeah, that’s what we did before.’ So it’s not that big of a deal,” Klein said.

Though these county offices have been impacted by the incident, Klein insists the cyberattack has not impacted public services to the county.

“The service to the citizens not really impacted. The way the internal people, the employees and the staff go about accomplishing their jobs has been impacted,” Klein said. “But [it’s] varied kind of throughout the county as to what level of disruption.”

Klein said IT officials in the Wood County Information Technology Department received alerts early Monday morning from the county’s network firewall about malicious activity.

The county’s IT department is working with the FBI and third-party cybersecurity consultants to analyze and test the system, according to a press release issued Tuesday by the Wood County Commissioners’ Office.

Klein told StateScoop that he hasn’t personally seen any ransom letters or been told if Wood County has received a ransom demand, but is confident the county will follow recommendations of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which discourages government agencies from paying ransoms.

“I think it’s the standard thing, you know. It’s the belief is that it just encourages more [disruption],” said Klein.

Columbus, Ohio, suffered a cyberattack last July that officials estimated will cost the city “millions” of dollars to recover from.