Bucks County has identified a ransomware called “Akira” as the cause of a cyber security incident that has affected the county’s Emergency Communications Department for more than a week.
“All 911 phone and radio systems remain operational as the county makes progress restoring the computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system,” county Communications Director Eric Nagy stated on the county website Friday. On Monday, spokesman James O’Malley said the county had nothing more to add to that statement.
The county did say it alerted other local, state and federal “partners” that the Akira ransomeware is involved so they can “have situational awareness and review their own systems.”
Two long-time Bucks County fire department officials, Rob Sponheimer in Bensalem and Tim Brewer in Upper Makefield, both said that the cyber problem hasn’t affected responses to emergency calls. Brewer said that it has affected the use of cell phone apps for fire call notifications. Now fire company members must revert to using pagers to get those calls.
“We’re having to carry pagers again. It’s an inconvenience,” Brewer said, but has not affected the answering of fire calls. But he wanted to assure the public that “calls will be answered promptly.”
More:Bucks County Emergency Communications struck by ‘cybersecurity incident.’ What it means
Bucks officials would not say whether it was negotiating with the perpetrators or whether it was able to restore most of the CAD service. The CAD system “primarily assists dispatchers and first responders with incident documentation, and does not impact call-taking and response abilities,” the county noted when it first announced the security breach Jan. 23.
Brewer said that the CAD service provided a report of the time a fire company was dispatched and how long they were at the scene of a fire, vehicle accident or other incident. Now, the fire companies need to make a manual report until the system can be restored.

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