Bucks County has restored “core functionality” to its emergency communications department’s computer-assisted dispatch (CAD) system.
The system, which documents emergency calls, had been out of service for nine-days after a ransomware attack took the system offline Jan. 21.
County staff worked with public safety and law enforcement to restore the power while alerting other government agencies that a ransomware called “Akira” was suspected in the attack. The county stressed that “at no point during the outage were the county’s 911 call-taking abilities interrupted,” said county spokesman James O’Malley.
Staff brought the CAD system core back online Tuesday afternoon but a timeline for full restoration has not been established, O’Malley stated. He added that the county’s connectivity to state and federal databases containing criminal justice information also has been restored.
During the outage, dispatchers relied on backup systems to document and dispatch calls. And since an app that was used to alert firefighters to calls through their cellphones was affected, they used pagers to alert volunteers, said Upper Makefield Fire Chief Tim Brewer. The app has been restored, O’Malley said.