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Hacker Or Virus? Century Suffers Computer Data Loss, $9K Expense
April 20, 2011
The Town of Century suffered a major computer server failure last year that was blamed on either a hacker or virus and recovering from the incident cost the town over $9,000.
The incident happened last November, but Century Mayor Freddie McCall just made the incident and costs public this week.
According to McCall, he delayed telling the town council because the incident “was under investigation”. He said the town’s main computer server failed in late November as the result of a virus — leaving the town without computer for about a week. He said a “major investigation” was launched to determine if the virus infected the server as a result of employee action within the building or as the result of an outside hacker attack.
McCall said he notified the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office of the incident, but the Sheriff’s Office did not investigate any criminal actions, according to a spokesperson. The town’s computer consultant, Leonard Hursh of Southern Computer Services in Atmore, and another outside firm were unsuccessful in determining exactly what brought down the server and destroyed data, the mayor said.
About 95 percent of the data on the server was recovered, Hursh said. The five percent of the town’s data that was lost was deemed “non-critical”, he said. The total cost for data recovery efforts and server upgrades was $9,049.49.
McCall said that there was no indication that the server data was compromised and obtained by any outside party — including the names and addresses of every water and gas customer in the town. There were no social security numbers, credit card numbers or other sensitive data on the server, he said.
Hursh said the server has been upgraded with a new firewall and other security measures to prevent future problems. In addition, the town is upgrading the security system on the city hall building. Building security upgrades will cost $398 with a $45.95 per month monitoring agreement.
“We are going to make sure this does not happen again,” McCall said. “We are securing everything.”
Comments
8 Responses to “Hacker Or Virus? Century Suffers Computer Data Loss, $9K Expense”
I work in PC tech support. Lyall is right. This sounds like a serious data recovery job, and that can cost LOTS of money. I have no idea what the Mayor’s expense allowance is for these types of things, but the price tag is not outside the realm of normal for recovering data from a major hard drive failure or damage.
I back up 6 servers and 3 mission critical workstations for $35.00 a month with www mozy com. Linux and windows. I can access my back ups with my phone. There is no excuse. The motto of an IT professional is “plan for the worst, hope for the best”
That being said, kevins boys at southern computer are pretty good at what they do. With that price tag it sounds more like a hardware failure and the hard drive had to be sent off for recovery. But, I can assure you that Kevin did not rip anybody off.
You would be surprised at the hardware/software that companies use to store there mission critical data. I can’t count how many times I worked on systems that were over 15 years old. It is very hard to make them understand the importance of this equipment until it’s down.
I’m with “concerned citizen” how did that bill get paid and no one knew?
yes computers and servers will get messed up, its a lesson learned lets move ahead .
Another thing if they dont use ADT for monitoring on the building security they might as well have nothing. All other services go to a call center, when someone there gets the time they will call the police. When your alarm rings with ADT, the response is immediate. In your house with ADT they can listen immediately to what is going on in the house, Im going to guess that they went with the cheapest service judging by the monthly bill rate, which is not ADT and when the alarm goes off the thief will have about three hours before anyone is told there has been an alarm incident. Those services dont like to tell people about the call center issue because they wouldnt get any business…… one of my friends has a service, he learned the hard way. If you dont believe it try setting it off randomly without the rep there and see what happens.
Maybe the public shouldn’t have been notified but the Town of Century Council Members should have been told. They too work for the benefit of the people. Only my opinion.
You need to get a dose of reality! All government agencies and private companies have this problem. Computers are expensive, the cost of retrieving data and the cost of protection is not cheap. Welcome to our new world. The Town of Century did what they needed to do to salvage and protect their records. If you do not understand how complicated it is then maybe you need to look on a smaller scale to compare. You buy a new car, something happens, you have to take it to the dealership because no one else is qualified to fix it. All the the bells and whistles are great but any John Doe mechanic down the street does not have the ability to repair it. Advancement comes with a price tag.
How did the Mayor pay a bill for over 9,000 dollars without the Town Council knowing about it??? I would think his spending limits without Council knowledge would be much lower than this .
Just another example that shows the town of Century still lives in the stone age. As important as running a municipality is, you would think they had back ups made and another server on back up. Its not if a computer system fails, its WHEN.
The computer “firm” that recovered data took them for an expensive ride it seems…