Las Vegas IT teams quick to thwart cyber attack

Officials for the City of Las Vegas said its IT team had contained and resolved a security breach on Wednesday.

Thanks to the quick response of its security systems and IT staff, officials said the American city was able to avoid an attack that had the potential to be a "devastating situation". 

It began on Tuesday at 4:30 am, according to the official Twitter account for the City of Las Vegas, and was referred to as a "cyber compromise". The City's security teams took immediate steps to protect data systems.

By Wednesday, its systems were back online. 

"Following yesterday's cyber compromise, we have resumed full operations with all data systems functioning as normal," a post said on the city's Twitter account. "Thanks to our software security systems and fast action by our IT staff, we were fortunate to avoid what had the potential to be a devastating situation."

"We do not believe any data was lost from our systems and no personal data was taken. We are unclear as to who was responsible for the compromise, but we will continue to look for potential indications."

According to city spokesperson David Riggleman, Las Vegas thwarts an average of 279,000 attempts to breach its systems every month.

"A lot of people out there are trying to open that cyber door," Riggleman told The Las Vegas Review Journal.

Despite its quick turn around, specific details of the attack are still yet to be disclosed. There is a possibility that this could be another US city hit with ransomware, like Baltimore and the two Florida towns that were shutdown in 2019. But unlike those cases, Las Vegas had its systems up and running within 48 hours and no data is believed to have been compromised.