NY county warned of potential ransomware attack prior to incident

Newsday reports that Suffolk County, New York, has been warned about a "possible ransomware event" in June, or nearly three months before being compromised on Sept. 8. No ransomware attack has been going on and no malicious activity has been detected by the county's IT systems during the time the tip was sent, said Suffolk Information Technology Coordinator Brian Bartholomew in an email thread at a time. Nearly 4TB of data has been stolen as a result of the attack and Suffolk County has already incurred $140 million in payments to vendors since the intrusion. "There is still an ongoing forensic assessment to determine exactly when and how the threat actors accessed county systems. Our team of cybersecurity experts are working to piece together these details, while we continue with our safe and secure rolling restoration," said Suffolk County spokesperson Nicole Russo. Meanwhile, TechWorks CEO Chris Coluccio noted that Suffolk's systems may have been compromised days or weeks prior to the attack. "There should have been systems in place that would have caught that," he added.