Monroe County residents who signed up for emergency alerts may have had their personal information stolen by hackers in a nationwide data breach.
What’s Happening: Criminals broke into the OnSolve CodeRED system that Monroe County uses to send emergency alerts to residents. The hack affected every county and city across the country that uses the system.
What’s Important: If you signed up for CodeRED alerts, hackers may have stolen your name, address, email, phone number and password. If you use that same password for other accounts like banking or social media, you need to change those passwords right away.
What Was Lost: Monroe County did not cause this breach. The company that runs CodeRED said an organized group of criminals attacked their system. Anyone who signed up for alerts after March 31 will need to sign up again once the new system is ready. People who signed up before March 31 will be moved to the new system automatically.
What Happens Next: The old CodeRED system has been shut down nationwide. The company is moving everyone to a new system called Crisis24 CodeRED that was not affected by the hack. Monroe County is working to get the new system up and running as soon as possible.
The Big Picture: This is part of a growing wave of cyber attacks hitting government services and private companies across the country. The breach shows how vulnerable emergency alert systems can be when they rely on outside companies to store resident information.
The Sources: Monroe County Emergency Management.
B.T. Clark is an award-winning journalist and the Publisher of The Georgia Sun. He has 25 years of experience in journalism and served as Managing Editor of Neighbor Newspapers in metro Atlanta for 15 years and Digital Director at Times-Journal Inc. for 8 years. His work has appeared in several newspapers throughout the state including Neighbor Newspapers, The Cherokee Tribune and The Marietta Daily Journal. He is a Georgia native and a fifth-generation Georgian.