Barry County E9-1-1 board met June 22
July 1, 2020
Sheila Harris
Barry County Emergency Services E9-1-1 Board met Monday, June 22.
Executive Director of Emergency Services, Mike Phillips, presented a budget proposal of $1,763,575 for the upcoming fiscal year, just under the savings account balance of $1,800,000.
According to Phillips, the proposed budget includes the normal loan payment - paid semi-annually, totalling $174,00 for the year - the AVL tracking project, minor enhancements with the Fire and EMS departments, and a 5th EMS workstation, fully staffed and with radio software.
“This budget represents a 9.39 percent decrease from the 2019-2020 budget,” Phillips said.
During the meeting, Wheaton fire chief, Lindy Lombard, and representatives from RCS, a company in Springfield that installs radio communication equipment, presented discussion about the possibility of installing new radio equipment in the E9-1-1 dispatch center to improve communication between the Wheaton Fire Department and the dispatch center.
Phillips was at first reluctant to entertain discussion, until the RCS representatives clarified that the RCS system would transition automatically from analog to digital communication, without an additional step for dispatchers to manually perform. It was agreed that a conference call would be scheduled at a later date to discuss a possible purchase of the equipment.
The May 6 incident in which an E911 database and APP server were infected with malware was also a topic of discussion.
“About midnight on May 6, the CAD database and APP server at the E9-1-1 call center were infected with malware which caused computer services to stop communicating with dispatch systems,” Phillips said.
According to Phillips, the problem was at first intermittent, but by 12:30 a.m., all communication between programs stopped.
“I arrived onsite shortly before 1 a.m.,” Phillips said, “and began unplugging network cables. I then restarted firewalls and servers to see if connections could be restored, but didn’t have any luck.”
According to Phillips, the E9-1-1 center’s IT personnel arrived onsite about 2:30 a.m., when it was determined that servers and back-up servers had both been corrupted.
“Both servers were completely erased and fresh configuaration installations were performed,” Phillips said. “We had to use data from an offsite back-up server from November 2019, as a starting point.
“Although the malware created problems with reports and statistics, no information was lost nor stolen, nor were dispatchers ever unable to communicate with responders,” Phillips said.
“Communication between computer systems was fully restored about 7:30 a.m. the same morning,” Phillips said. “However, it will take several months to re-create the records that were lost.”
Phillips said the origin of the malware is unknown, although he did receive a telephone call a week later from FBI cyber security, warning that 9-1-1 centers were seeing increased attempts of attack nationwide.
According to Phillips, changes to the 9-1-1 center have since been made. Two more external hard drives have been purchased for weekly system image back-ups, which are unplugged from the servers after back-ups are completed. Complete server back-ups, including the center’s ProQA database are performed weekly as well - a time-consuming process which requires coordinating non-overlapping times for the backups, in order to manage workload processing.
Phillips also added that IP addresses have been changed and moved to different domains, with malware scans scheduled more frequently and in targeted locations.
“Nothing is 100 percent preventable” Phillips said, “but I do believe we’ve taken some steps that should help protect us in the future.”
The next board meeting is scheduled for September 28.
Sheila Harris
Barry County Emergency Services E9-1-1 Board met Monday, June 22.
Executive Director of Emergency Services, Mike Phillips, presented a budget proposal of $1,763,575 for the upcoming fiscal year, just under the savings account balance of $1,800,000.
According to Phillips, the proposed budget includes the normal loan payment - paid semi-annually, totalling $174,00 for the year - the AVL tracking project, minor enhancements with the Fire and EMS departments, and a 5th EMS workstation, fully staffed and with radio software.
“This budget represents a 9.39 percent decrease from the 2019-2020 budget,” Phillips said.
During the meeting, Wheaton fire chief, Lindy Lombard, and representatives from RCS, a company in Springfield that installs radio communication equipment, presented discussion about the possibility of installing new radio equipment in the E9-1-1 dispatch center to improve communication between the Wheaton Fire Department and the dispatch center.
Phillips was at first reluctant to entertain discussion, until the RCS representatives clarified that the RCS system would transition automatically from analog to digital communication, without an additional step for dispatchers to manually perform. It was agreed that a conference call would be scheduled at a later date to discuss a possible purchase of the equipment.
The May 6 incident in which an E911 database and APP server were infected with malware was also a topic of discussion.
“About midnight on May 6, the CAD database and APP server at the E9-1-1 call center were infected with malware which caused computer services to stop communicating with dispatch systems,” Phillips said.
According to Phillips, the problem was at first intermittent, but by 12:30 a.m., all communication between programs stopped.
“I arrived onsite shortly before 1 a.m.,” Phillips said, “and began unplugging network cables. I then restarted firewalls and servers to see if connections could be restored, but didn’t have any luck.”
According to Phillips, the E9-1-1 center’s IT personnel arrived onsite about 2:30 a.m., when it was determined that servers and back-up servers had both been corrupted.
“Both servers were completely erased and fresh configuaration installations were performed,” Phillips said. “We had to use data from an offsite back-up server from November 2019, as a starting point.
“Although the malware created problems with reports and statistics, no information was lost nor stolen, nor were dispatchers ever unable to communicate with responders,” Phillips said.
“Communication between computer systems was fully restored about 7:30 a.m. the same morning,” Phillips said. “However, it will take several months to re-create the records that were lost.”
Phillips said the origin of the malware is unknown, although he did receive a telephone call a week later from FBI cyber security, warning that 9-1-1 centers were seeing increased attempts of attack nationwide.
According to Phillips, changes to the 9-1-1 center have since been made. Two more external hard drives have been purchased for weekly system image back-ups, which are unplugged from the servers after back-ups are completed. Complete server back-ups, including the center’s ProQA database are performed weekly as well - a time-consuming process which requires coordinating non-overlapping times for the backups, in order to manage workload processing.
Phillips also added that IP addresses have been changed and moved to different domains, with malware scans scheduled more frequently and in targeted locations.
“Nothing is 100 percent preventable” Phillips said, “but I do believe we’ve taken some steps that should help protect us in the future.”
The next board meeting is scheduled for September 28.
