For those of you not aware, on August 16th the City of Lampasas was hit by a ransomware attack. The city network apparently having been left wide open by our TWO highly-paid computer experts. Here is a timeline of what transpired.
You’d think after the city was held hostage for ten days and at LEAST $36,000 worth of equipment was ruined (that we know of), City Council might have some questions and Monica Wright (the HEAD of the IT Department) might have some answers or explanations about how it happened and why it won’t happen again.
Nope.
One reason for the lack of details was that Monica Wright couldn’t even be bothered to show up for the August 26th City Council meeting to make her departmental report!! She sent her sidekick and supposed “network administrator” to the meeting instead [page 1: City Staff present]. See photo of minutes below:
There are only two explanations for this: Monica was on one of her many vacations OR she was afraid to face the music. She loves having the title and extra pay of a ‘department head’, apparently….but she doesn’t want all those icky responsibilities and hard work.
Well, at least Kristy was there to explain it all – since she is ostensibly (look it up, Monica) in charge of the City’s network.
Nope. Apparently Kristy sat there twiddling her thumbs the entire meeting. No report was made by her either. The fire chief made his report and that was the end of any departmental reports (see pages 5 and 6). See photo below:
Not only that, City Council (whom I call The Seven Goldfish, due to their very short memories) didn’t even ask about it!! In fact, Misti Talbert THANKED them for their hard work and that was the end of it.
I’d like to tell you that City Manager Finley “Spinley” DeGraffenried was there to make a report on the cyber attack, but HE wasn’t there either! He sent his assistant Gary Cox to “commend the IT and Finance Departments” over the ransomware attack. I assume he included the Finance Department since they will be writing a bunch of huge checks to replace all the ruined computer servers and computers, right?
