The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office has stopped using its CodeRED system to alert residents of orders to evacuate or shelter in place or of other emergencies after learning of a cyberattack on the network and a data breach.
Sheriff’s Deputy Daniel Carlin said Monday that the county stopped using CodeRED Nov. 21 when it learned of the data breach. Two weeks before that, the sheriff’s office started getting notifications that the system was down, but couldn’t get confirmation.
Carlin said CodeRED, accessed through an app, lost a lot of customers’ information. “We don’t trust continuing to use them.”
Although the data haven’t been published online, the sheriff’s office is encouraging all CodeRED users to contact credit bureaus to ensure their personal information has not been compromised. The sheriff’s office was among hundreds of agencies affected by the nationwide cybersecurity attack.
Douglas County is talking to representatives of similar alert systems and hopes to have a new network locked in within the next week or two, Carlin said. Until then, the sheriff’s department will go door-to-door in cases of a need to evacuate or shelter in place and use social media and other means to alert people, he added.
Douglas County is one of several counties that use CodeRED to alert residents of evacuation orders and other emergencies. Weld County also is looking for a new alert provider since CodeRED went down.
The county also uses the state-run Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, or IPAWS, to notify people of wildfires and other emergencies.
“CodeRED was a great system for us to alert the public very fast,” Carlin said. “Easy access is of concern, but we 100% believe we can mitigate it via door-to-door knocks and social media posts.”
He said that residents will likely have to sign up for the system because their information won’t automatically be transferred.
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