Cyberattack Disabled Buncombe County’s Emergency Notification System, 911 Not Impacted
On November 25th, Buncombe County announced that due to a cyber attack in a third-party vendor’s system, Buncombe County is unable to send emergency alerts (phone calls, text, and emails) known as “BCAlerts” using the OnSolve CodeRed environment. The impacted data may include OnSolve CodeRed users: name address, email address Phone numbers, and/or associated passwords used to create the profile for alters. If the same password is used for other personal or businesses accounts, those passwords should be changed immediately.
This cyber attack does not impact any other county system or users. Importantly, this outage does not impact 911 services or emergency response operations.
What Happened
On Nov. 18, Buncombe County notified the community of the outage to the CodeRED/BC Alerts emergency notification system. On Nov. 24, OnSolve informed the county of the data breach of personally identifiable information of system users. Analysis of the data breach indicates this incident was strictly contained within the OnSolve CodeRed environment, and at this juncture, there is no indication the information has been published.
In Buncombe County, CodeRED is also used to send Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) messages or “reverse 911” calls in the event of emergency evacuations. During this outage, community members will still receive these alerts. Any requests for IPAWS messages from first responders will be referred to North Carolina Emergency Management or FEMA for fulfillment.
Buncombe County is engaging with the vendor to learn more and evaluate its relationship with this vendor. The County urges those impacted by this cyber attack to contact credit bureaus to ensure their personal identifying information has not been compromised. Free credit monitoring is offered by the Federal Trade Commission – learn more here. Buncombe County was among hundreds of agencies impacted by the cybersecurity attack on this vendor.
