The Town of St. Marys has revealed the extent of a cyberattack last year that caused chaos in the Perth County community.
A report on the incident indicates that the cyberattack cost $1.3 million, with $290,000 of that sum paid as ransom to the hackers in Bitcoin. The payment was made after the town received communication indicating that sensitive data had been transferred without proper authorization in July 2022.
Hackers encrypted several town-related servers and files before the infiltration was discovered by IT staff. Town staff disconnected all servers, preventing further infiltration.
"Because of quick actions of the IT staff, the ransomware did not fully encrypt all the Town’s systems," the report said. "This action, combined with a strategic decision in 2020 to begin migrating the Town’s operating environment to the Cloud, meant that none of the Town’s critical services like fire, police, transit, and water/wastewater were impacted. From the public’s perspective, there was little, to nothing, in the way of perceived service disruption with the exception of some online and in-person services being unavailable (i.e. bookings, payments). Internally, staff maintained about 80% functionality following the attack."
The cost of rebuilding the network system came with a price tag of $440,133, and the town spent $860,970 on incident management and investigation, as well as the ransom.
The report states that the town maintained about 80 per cent of functionality after the attack.
The town says it is now taking steps to enhance its cybersecurity, including regular assessments, policy revisions, and staff education. Council has also approved the hiring of additional staff resources to assist with data management and retention processes.
