Updates on the recent cybersecurity attack and the sports festival were presented at last week’s Durant City Council meeting.
On June 1, the City of Durant was hit with a ransomware attack and the city said they immediately began working with law enforcement and cybersecurity experts to contain the issue and restore operations.
City Manager Pam Polk said internet access has since been fully restored across all departments.
“Approximately 90 percent of city servers are back online,” Polk said. “We still have continued progress there that should be online within a few weeks.”
As of last week, the fire department still needed Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) integration, according to Polk.
“We’ve all been on the paper system,” Polk said. “We had to go back old school to do everything. So, utilities department went out and bought receipt books. Of course, we couldn’t take online payments, but everybody has worked so hard.
“I’m going to have to say kudos to all of our employees who have worked through all of this. It’s still a trying time and we’re still going through it. Actually, it will be months before everything is actually back up and ready to go at full speed. We have experienced significant data loss. Right now, we have one more place to look to try to find some of the data that we stored on the shared drive.”
Polk said this has been a huge undertaking the city is still going through but they will get through it.
“We’re actively working with a backup software vendor to retrieve data,” Polk said. “That’s the one place that we still have that we might can find some data.”
She said a project has been initiated to deploy a comprehensive backup solution, including offsite and cloud space backup to improve the city’s safety and resilience. Network security upgrades are scheduled the next six to eight weeks.
Mayor Martin Tucker said this has happened to other cities in the state, so Durant was not the only one singled out.
“One of the questions I get is are we going to pay the ransom and the answer’s no,” Tucker said. “I don’t even know if they ever gave us a ransom demand. If they did, I’m not aware of it. One of the things I share with Pam occassionally, we will be better off on the other side, but gosh, it’s also unpleasant to go through.”
Ryan Brewer, parks and recreation manager, spoke about the recent Durant Sports Festival.
“For the past year, we have been planning, organizing the second annual Durant Sports Festival,” Brewer said. “We ended up with 20 organizations, businesses, community leaders and local organizers plan the biggest sports and rec festival in the nation. The outcome was way beyond what I expected for year two.”
Brewer said it began May 29 at the Magnolia Festival when the movie “8 Seconds” was shown by West Durant Merchants Association and the last event, a rugby tournament, took place on June 29.
“Participants and attendees had the opportunity to attend 45 different events all throughout the city which included two community wide events, 16 tournaments or competitions, 12 camps, clinics or classes and a variety of recreational activities that included rugby, stickball, baseball, softball, soccer, bike, flag football, tennis, fishing, movies, disc golf, cornhole, ninja gymnastics, rodeo, running, car show, scuba diving, fitness, swimming and buddy ball,” Brewer said.
He said the cornhole tournament was postponed because of rain and it will be hosted by The Payton Project in the fall. According to Brewer, last year’s festival had 22 days of events and this year, it was 31 days. The number of partners for the festival also increased from 12 to 20.
Brewer said that last year, there were 3,779 participants and this year, there were 6,887 participants and there were almost 21,000 people in town for the festival, compared to 8,000 least year.
This included more than 500 professional athletes and more than 418 cities, 32 states and 10 countries were represented.
According to Brewer, the festival made it into the top 25 National Parks award for health and and well being and the top 100 for equity and inclusion. He said two-three other cities in the nation will be copying what the City of Durant has done.
“We’re going to keep building because I won’t lie, I’m going to be a little upset if these cities double or triple our size get an award for my idea,” Brewer said. “We already have things working and we’re looking forward to next year.”