The Oakland FY 2021-23 Proposed Policy Budget reflects the City of Oakland’s failure to realize it’s in the 21st Century, and is bent on a guns (police) vs. butter (homeless and social services) structure. No where in the FY 2021-23 Proposed Policy Budget is there substantial discussion of, and evidence of a comprehensive plan to combat, cyberattacks.
All of this is happening, or really not happening, in Oakland, California, and all the while our nations main pipeline was the focus of a ransomwhere attack so large it could cripple a portion of our economy. And all of that happening during the Pandemic.
The Colonial Pipeline carries 2.5 million barrels a day or 45 percent of the American East Coast’s supply of diesel, gasoline and jet fuel. The Colonial Pipeline was knocked completely offline by a cyber-criminal gang called DarkSide on Friday and work to restore service is continuing.
In other words, the problem caused by the hacker group is not at all fixed. Folks, that’s scary.
Meanwhile, a global coalition of technology companies and law enforcement bodies is calling for “aggressive and urgent” action against ransomware. According to reports, Microsoft, Amazon, the FBI and the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency have joined the Ransomware Task Force (RTF) in giving governments nearly 50 recommendations. If Oakland’s paying any attention to this, the city is certainly quiet about it.
In fact, the City of Oakland has been blind to the growing cyber-forces around it, and impacting it. I’ve tried to warn Oakland about how there are efforts to send out fake news campaigns designed to get folks racially charged up. That was done last year in the form of the Lake Merritt Noose incident. The signs that it was engineered were all over, yet the Oakland Police showed zero interest in dealing with the issue.
And typing “oakland government cyber attack” in Google yields “Cyber Security Taskforce – Oakland County, Michigan”. Oakland’s not mentioned.
The City of Oakland, from the public works to police to the Port of Oakland, and to the Oakland City Council, needs to wake up and stop acting like it’s Alice in the middle of Wonderland. We need a large task force to make sure Oakland’s able to battle back against even cyber-threats we can only imagine.
Stay tuned.