Monday, August 8, 2022 | 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Megan Bixler, Technical Program Manager, APCO International

“Ransomware is the biggest threat to public safety.  As the first of the first responders, we need to plan for how to deal with these attacks before they happen to minimize the impacts.”

During this presentation, Megan Bixler discussed some different types of ransomware, the differences between each of these, and how to mitigate the impacts to each Emergency Communications Center (ECC). If your ECC is impacted by a ransomware attack, the best method is to not pay the ransom.  If you do pay the ransom, there is no guarantee that decryption keys will actually be provided, and if they are, there is no guarantee the the data has not been compromised.  The key to recovery from a ransomware attack is prevention and a Cyber Incident Response Plan.

There are several free federal resources from CISA, FBI, and US-CERT that ECCs can utilized for free.  Links to these free resources can be found on the APCO cybersecurity web pages.