Dial-a-bus cyber attack leaves appointments diary unaffected

A cyber attack has hit the Orkney Disability Forum’s dial-a-bus service, though they luckily they have not lost their appointments diary.

The attack occurred yesterday afternoon, leading to a ransom note demanding payment in bitcoin.

The Orkney Disability Forum manager, Lorraine Falconer, explained:

“I’d been working on the system at 2 o’clock yesterday afternoon and it must have been about 3 o’clock that the accounts administrator noticed she couldn’t get into certain files. They were coming up saying they were encrypted.”

She phoned Dave Clapham, the IT Services manager at Scholes Chartered Accountants, who investigated and concluded that the forum had suffered a cyber attack.

Despite this, the forum was very lucky — their booking calendar was left open on one of the computers, which means that the appointments have not been lost. Nevertheless, they will still be phoning their users to reassure them.

For more information, see this week’s edition of The Orcadian.