After Daviess County Public Library fell victim to a cybersecurity attack earlier this week, they have announced they will be closed for three days next week to conduct an inventory for materials.
DCPL experienced a ransomware attack on Sunday, receiving a vague notice, claiming that the library’s information had been encrypted and would not be released without six bitcoin, a type of digital currency, which is the equivalent of around $30,000. The library refused to pay the ransom and relied on data back-ups to restore their information.
According to a post on social media, DCPL plans to close Tuesday through Thursday next week. According to DCPL Director Erin Waller, her staff has been operating as normally as possible for the public, but they have a lot of items to fix behind the scenes.
“We are in recovering mode, which means we are getting back-up data back into place and finding information about lost data from other sources that we use,” Waller said.
Because they have been limited to only checking out material manually, DCPL has limited patrons to 15 items. Checking in materials must also be done manually, which is time intensive and one of the reasons for next week’s closing.
Waller said this will mostly be an inventory to see what material needs to be re-entered into their system and also a data entry for check-outs and check-ins that have occurred this week.
Because of delayed check-ins, Waller said DCPL will not be charging late fees for the month of May.
“This is a thank you to our patrons for being patient with us,” she said.
While Waller said she does conduct training to teach staff and patrons about phishing attempts, future trainings are in the works as well. DCPL is currently pricing more robust and reliable cloud back-ups, Waller said, because virtual back-ups were encrypted in the cybersecurity attack as well.
“But the reality is that these criminals are extremely sneaky and will find unique ways to hit an organization,” Waller said.
The public has been understanding and sympathetic to the situation, according to Waller.
“The library was a victim of a crime and I think most people understand that,” Waller said, reiterating that absolutely no personal or financial data was breached.
