By Sarah Roebuck
SA国际传媒
DALLAS 鈥� A ransomware attack on the City of Dallas 鈥渟ignificantly impacted鈥� its fire-rescue and police agencies, causing mistakes and delays for service calls, leaders told .
On May 3, members of the city鈥檚 Information and Technology Services department detected a cyber threat by Royal, a prolific ransomware targeting group, and immediately began working to isolate it.
"[E]mployees have been hard at work to contain the issue and ensure continued service to our residents,鈥� City Manager T.C. Broadnax said a day after the ransomware was discovered. 鈥淔or those departments affected, emergency plans prepared and practiced in advance are paying off.鈥�
Due to the attack, Dallas-Fire Rescue had to resort to a rudimentary method of manual dispatching that relies on radio communication, President of the Dallas Fire Fighters Association Jim McDade told the Dallas Morning News.
鈥淲e have a knack of just getting it done,鈥� McDade he told the outlet. 鈥淲e鈥檙e gonna get it done, we鈥檙e gonna respond. Nobody鈥檚 in danger.鈥�
In a written statement, Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garc铆a said the department鈥檚 operations have been 鈥渟ignificantly impacted鈥� by the outage.
As of Monday, the city was still experiencing outages due to the attack.