I’m an adjunct professor in the criminal justice department here at Strayer I’ve been teaching here for about nine years now. Additionally my day job is I’m the Chief of Police for the city of Independence Ohio.
Independence Ohio is a suburb of Cleveland located in northeast Ohio. It’s a small suburb but it’s very busy and has a big footprint. It’s right at the intersection of two major interstate highways. We have a very large business population, and very large tax base. Our residential populations only around 7200 but during the day we have 36,000 people that come into the city to work. So we’ve got some big city challenges and a small city police department and the challenges that go with it.
Recently our city, our data system was struck with a ransomware attack. It was identified as one of the Korean variance or ransomware that’s popular. It’s been hitting a lot of government non-profits. We were able to minimize the data loss. We only lost less than half a day’s worth of data. Reason for that was because some of the preparation we had done beforehand but we did lose data and there was some problems. We took some steps to mitigate the damage, and we also took steps to make sure that it doesn’t occur again.
Now the challenge that I want to pose to you as students and what your mission is going to be as you’re going to need to create two lists.
Okay, put yourself in my shoes. You’re the head of the police department and the mayor comes to you and says, “Hey IT just called. We’ve got this ransomware attack.”
Two things I want you to consider:
First, what would you do beforehand preparation wise to prepare your city to be able to withstand this type of attack? What steps would you take technologically what steps would you take personnel wise what steps would you take training wise? Consider all the possible bad effects were ransomware attack and how you could have them off the path and keep happening.
The Second, list that I’d like you to make a list of what to do after it happens. Because despite all the best safeguards we all know that as quickly as we catch up with safeguards and technology the bad guys figure out a workaround or another avenue to try to get into our systems. So moving forward. What would you do to mitigate the damage and to keep it from occurring again? Who would you contact? What would you do again from a data safety standpoint and from a personnel standpoint?
A little bit of background how it occurred. A clerical employee opened an attachment on an infected email. That’s what got the ransomware into our system to begin with. So there’s your challenge.
What would you do if you’re faced with that challenge but think ahead because you don’t criminal justice were always planning ahead. How do we prevent things from happening and then think forward after a does happen.
What lessons did we learn how do we keep it from happening again and what resources are out there and available.
So I’d like you to put those two lists together for me. And then I’m sure your professor is going to give you some further instructions as to what to do.
Have fun! Dig deep on this.
I’m sure there’s a lot of information out there on ransomware attacks that’ll help you out. And there’s a lot of great strategies out there
Assignment Instructions:
Create a checklist to help the chief with the ransomware attack in his city. In the checklist, you need to create items to address the following issues:
List and briefly describe the technological items to help your city prepare to withstand ransomware attacks.
List and briefly describe the personnel items to help your city prepare to withstand ransomware attacks.
List and briefly explain the training requirements to help your city prepare to withstand ransomware attacks.
List and briefly describe the items you will do to mitigate the damage that already took place.
Use at least three quality references for this assignment. Note: Wikipedia and similar websites do not qualify as quality resources.
