May 19, 2022 – The City of Tulsa had received a message on its server that said, “We have compromised your server, contact us on the dark web at this address so we can negotiate terms for you to pay a ransom.” The message linked to images that showed hackers had access to their data.
It took three weeks for FBI officials, Microsoft teams and internal IT professionals to identify the hackers and months to fix the problems they caused. Fleet Maintenance Manager Mike Wallace’s team shifted to a paper-based system in the meantime.
Most fleets have a disaster recovery plan for floods, tornadoes, other natural disasters, and now even for pandemics. But most still lack data recovery plans, he adds. “I wouldn’t want any other fleet to go through this. It was an interesting couple of months,” Wallace concludes. “Put things in place to be ready for it.”
