Santee pays $603,000 to third-party company after ‘cybersecurity incident'

The city said it's investigating what information may have been compromised as well as what led up to the incident but that it could take weeks or even months to complete its probeThe City of Santee has paid a third-party company $603,000 following what it calls a"cybersecurity incident" on Aug. 20.

According to a statement sent from the city to NBC 7, the attack impacted the computer network that services administration offices, but “there was no impact to any systems that support 911 services, and the outage did not cause any public safety issues.” They added that the city remained open for business and that it brought in “certain third parties” to help. According to an agenda item for Santee City Council’s Sept. 25 meeting, $603,000 was paid to a company called Coveware on Sept. 10.

Behar explained that hackers are often part of larger, very organized organizations much like the companies they are attacking, and they’re rarely in the U.S. When it comes to who they choose to target, he said, they are constantly scanning the internet for vulnerabilities, and when they find one, they hold the owner's data hostage.

The city said it is investigating what information may have been compromised as well as what led up to the incident but that it could take weeks or even months to complete its probe, which is not an unusual timeline for this sort of thing, according to Behar.Behar added that, if anyone is concerned they may have been impacted, he suggests, freezing"their credit to prevent people from opening accounts on their behalf with any personal identifiable information that may have been leaked.

NBC 7 asked the city of Santee for more information on the incident, as well as details on what part of the budget the $603,000 payment came from, but officials have declined to share further information at this time. San Diego

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Santee pays $603,000 to third-party company after ‘cybersecurity incident'The city said it's investigating what information may have been compromised as well as what led up to the incident but that it could take weeks or even months…
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