Orion Library Tackles Malware Attack
(Liam Feeney, Nov. 18, 2023)
Lake Orion, MI – We all have heard the warnings about being safe online from various forms of hacking and cyber attacks. That lesson was again brought up recently as last month as Orion Township Public library was hit with a malware attack. Do to the severity of the attack the library had to temporarily shut down and restore its systems.
According to Director Chase McMunn, the attack wasn’t targeted at the library in particular, but did find a weakness in their system.
“We reached out to KTG, the company whom we work with for issues like this.” McMunn said, “They were critical in helping our staff look through our systems and clean it up.” No personal data was accessed.
The attack took out the systems for most of the weekend of October 20th and cost the township thousands of dollars in labor cost to make sure all systems were operational. “Smaller library systems like ours are usually test for bigger more lucrative targets later,” McMunn said. “Unfortunately all organizations are targets for ransomware like this.”
Thankfully the IT department, lead by the head of the department Steve Saunders, was able to get the systems up and running again.
“We still have some cleaning up to do but they’re working their way through it now.”
When asked about any advice for other libraries and organizations looking to avoid such attacks McMunn recommended that every staffer be trained in online safety to minimize the impact and possibility of these attacks.
Michigan State Police offers cybersecurity training for local governments, businesses and organizations. Info on those can be found at www.Michigan.gov/mc3.
Other resources can be found at www.cisa.gov/badpractices.
