Baltimore officials rebuffed offers of state help for a 'week' after crippling hack of city computer
Baltimore officials did not welcome help from Maryland information technology experts for the first week after City Hall’s computer networks were locked up by hackers on May 7 — a delay that is adding to a chorus of complaints about the city’s response.
At the Maryland Cybersecurity Council meeting last month, a senior official for Maryland’s Department of Information Technology briefed the group on Baltimore’s response to the ransomware attack that continues to cripple several city payment functions.
“Initially, for the first week or so, it was very hard to actually get people in there to work with them, and I think that’s because there wasn’t this working, trusted relationship happening prior to the event,” said John Evans, the state’s chief information security officer, according to a transcript of the May 22 council meeting obtained by The Baltimore Sun. “We almost felt a little bit like being kept at arm’s length.”
Evans could not be reached for comment, but he told the council he wasn’t criticizing the city but said rather it offered a lesson about why local jurisdictions and his agency need to establish policies to jointly respond to cyber attacks.
Read more: https://www.baltimoresun.com/politics/bs-md-cybersecurity-state-20190613-story.html