Just two months into his job as the town manager of Apex, Randy Vosburg faced a cyber attack.
“It took down a lot of our systems. Utility billing was one of those systems," said Vosburg.
Other WRAL Top Stories
Nearly seven months after last summer's attack, the town continues to deal with issues with that system.
“There’s a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s just a longer process because we want to make sure we’re getting it right," he said.
Vosburg said all residents should be getting accurate bills at this point. However, just this week, the town brought in an outside company to review its systems. That company will run simulated bills for all 30 thousand residents to check for any lingering issues.
Apex is not the only local government entity in our area to face a cyber attack in recent years.
In 2020, Rocky Mount faced a similar attack that forced residents to pay their utility bills in person.
A hacker locked down Chatham County’s computer systems just a couple of months after that. Then in 2022, a cyber attack locked six North Carolina counties out of their online records.
In May of 2023, the Raleigh Housing Authority faced a ransomware attack.
These are threats local cyber security expert Jon Sternstein said every organization is facing.
“The problem with the smaller governments and towns is they just don’t have the resources to actively protect themselves," said Sternstein.
Sternstein noted how those resources can be expensive, and there are options for organizations that can’t afford a full-time employee dedicated to cyber security.
One of those is through the cyber security and infrastructure security agency or CISA.
“They do free vulnerability scans for anyone that’s a part of the critical infrastructure," he said.
Sternstein said those scans come back quickly. He said it’s free resources like this that every organization should take advantage of to do what they can to protect from attacks.