Town Of Colonie Avoids More Than $400,000 In Ransom Due To Appliances And Backup

Background

The stories of ransomware attacks have unfortunately become more common, especially among municipalities. But, when the Town of Colonie, in the greater Albany, NY region, became the latest to fall prey to a ransomware attempt, the outcome was different than many others thanks to protection from Carbonite.

Solution

The day – January 15, 2020 – is one that will always be remembered by the six employees in the IT department of the town of Colonie. At around 3 p.m. a few employees received emails that appeared to be from other employees but were in fact a phishing attempt. The IT Department deleted the emails, and reformatted the users’ hard drives. At around 6 p.m., security alerts began notifying the team that something was amiss. Troubleshooting efforts led them to analyze one of their servers that couldn’t be accessed.