California county sheriff’s office grappling with cyberattack recovery

The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department in California is still working to completely restore its operations more than two weeks after most of its systems have been shut down due to a cyberattack, according to KABC-TV. Many of the department's systems were noted by multiple sources to have been encrypted, likely due to a malicious hyperlink that was clicked. While data has already been recovered, the disruption has prompted the department to leverage more traditional protocols for running license plates and background checks. "Public safety operations have not been affected. ... The county is conducting a forensics investigation to achieve a complete understanding of any impact to our operations before we fully use the system," said the department. Such an attack comes amid increasingly prevalent cyberattacks against local governments across the U.S. "The cost is pretty brutal, not just to financial — but in the case of law enforcement it's the agency, the people they are serving," said Tanium's Vivek Bhandari.