Well, Brandon Lingle predicted this. Andres Picon reports:
The ransomware attack that hit Judson Independent School District in June resulted in a payment to the hackers of more than half a million dollars to keep sensitive information from being uploaded to the dark web, officials said.
The ransom payment of $547,045 will keep “identifiable information” from being published online in places where “other threat actors could potentially access and misuse this data,” the district said in a statement posted to social media Wednesday.
Read more on San Antonio Express-News.
So if they paid the unidentified hackers more than $547,000, this whole incident will likely cost them about what….. $2 million?
And what will people think for now? That the district really screwed up and didn’t have a usable backup when it needed one? That it chose to pay to keep data off the dark web even though the FBI and most experienced firms recommend AGAINST doing that?
The district has not been transparent enough about this incident, and if I was a taxpayer there, I’d have a lot of questions and be losing patience by now. Hopefully, the federal government will investigate this breach and publish another guidance to all districts.