Cyberattack on CodeRED forces Douglas County Sheriff’s Office to seek new alert network

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 system and a evidence breach Sheriff s Deputy Daniel Carlin reported Monday that the county stopped using CodeRED Nov when it learned of the information breach Two weeks before that the sheriff s office started getting notifications that the system was down but couldn t get confirmation Carlin stated CodeRED accessed through an app lost a lot of customers information We don t trust continuing to use them Although the evidence 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 system locked in within the next week or two Carlin reported 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 Residents Alert and Warning System or IPAWS to notify people of wildfires and other emergencies CodeRED was a great system for us to alert the residents very fast Carlin noted Easy access is of concern but we believe we can mitigate it via door-to-door knocks and social media posts He declared that residents will likely have to sign up for the system because their information won t automatically be transferred Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day