BELMONT COUNTY, Ohio – Visitors to the Belmont County Courthouse on Wednesday were confronted with a giant sign, nearly six-feet high, promoting a service that claims, “it could save your life.”
The sign is for the CodeRED emergency alert system which experienced a nationwide outage in November following a ransomware attack. This attack exposed the passwords and personal data of nearly 11,000 Belmont County residents to cyber criminals who published the data online.
Nevertheless, Belmont County is displaying a large sign on county property encouraging residents to sign up for this service which says, “If you live or work in Belmont County, sign up for CodeRED. It could save your life.”
Belmont County’s CodeRED emergency alert system is now operational after being down nearly a week in November, Board of Commissioners President J.P. Dutton confirmed Wednesday during the regular commissioners meeting. When Belmont County experienced the emergency alert outage in November, Belmont County 9-1-1 Director Brian Minder did not notify the public that the system was down until six days after the outage began, but now it’s working and Belmont County officials are encouraging more people to sign up.
“It’s operational for all of us,” Dutton said. “There was some patching in terms of temporary fixes as we worked through a few things, but the system is functioning.”
When asked about backup plans in case of another outage, Dutton said, “I would let you know… we don’t want to see what happened [happen] again. These are the same challenges that other counties have had with similar technology, and we want to make sure the system continues to provide critical information to our residents effectively and efficiently.”
Despite other municipalities canceling their contracts with OnSolve, the company that operates CodeRED, Belmont County plans to maintain its contract, Dutton said.
Dutton said Belmont County’s response to the data breach was “ongoing.”
Belmont County 9-1-1 Director Minder previously issued a press release advising residents concerned about their data to contact the Crisis 24 media line and to change their passwords. Crisis 24 told journalist Karen Fatula to contact Belmont County about how residents should respond to the data breach but Minder referred back to Crisis 24.
Cuyahoga County in Ohio also experienced a data breach from the On Solve/Crisis 24 outage but Cleveland journalists obtained and published direct consumer contacts for the company: “CodeRED by Crisis24 support service can be reached at 866-939-0911 or crsupport@crisis24.com.” The emergency alert notification system affected in Cuyahoga County is the ReadyNotify app, operated by OnSolve/Crisis24.
When I asked Dutton if residents should have concerns about signing up for CodeRED considering its recent data breach, Dutton said technology is a regular part of our society, but people need to make their own decisions.
“that’s everyone else’s own personal decision. And what they think from a data standpoint, of some people, you know, may be more concerned than others. So maybe less concerned than others, you know, is in the collecting, [of] financial information to sign up, it’s not that level of information, but I can understand why some may be concerned…with anything. I mean, listen, the world we live in requires a lot of electronic data. And about anything that you do from a day-to-day basis, if you choose to take part in it.”
Belmont County Board of Commissioners President J.P. Dutton
CodeRed does not collect financial information, but names, addresses, emails and passwords used in the system were published online by cyber criminals in the November ransomware attack of OnSolve/Crisis 24. Minder previously confirmed that the personal data and passwords of approximately 10,8000 Belmont County residents who signed up for the emergency alert system were possibly compromised in the attack.
Dutton said the county has promoted CodeRED registration through signage in the courthouse lobby, EMA communications, meetings, and media outreach. “The media has done a very good job notifying the public,” Dutton said.
Dutton and other county employees said the courthouse CodeRED sign, which is located in the lobby across from the metal detector and deputy security station, has been there “awhile.”
Dutton also addressed the $3,488 per month IT contract with Omni Strategic Technologies for Belmont County 9-1-1, explaining it supports the county’s transition to Next Generation 9‑1‑1. “It’s requiring substantial IT changes from the old system to the new one,” he said. “We opted for a contractor route to ensure the work continues efficiently.” He added that there was no connection between this IT contract and the CodeRed outage.
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