A ransomware attack on the Sault Ste. Marie Police Service in 2021 has been deemed a privacy breach by Ontario's Information and Privacy Commissioner. Despite the police's initial claims of no data breach, the commissioner found that the attack resulted in a compromise of personal information and that the police response was inadequate.
On Thursday, Aug. 26, 2021, IT staff at Sault Ste. Marie Police Service received an urgent alert from their remote monitoring software. Two of their computer servers had gone offline. It turned out someone had locked the police out of their own administrative and records management systems. Exploiting a vulnerability in an email server's software patch, or a device connected to their public-facing IP addresses, a bad actor had encrypted the police data drives. Four days later, Sault Ste.
Marie Police Service acknowledged in a brief news release that a virtual ransomware attack had occurred. 'At no time was our ability to respond to calls for service compromised,' they said. IT staff were 'working through the attack to regain access to effected systems,' the release said. Over the months since then, police have released only occasional crumbs of additional information about the attack, insisting there was no privacy breach. Now, Ontario's Information and Privacy Commissioner is begging to differ. 'Respectfully, I disagree with the police’s position that the attack did not amount to a privacy breach,' says investigator John Gayle in a report issued by the commissioner this month. 'I am not satisfied that the police responded adequately to the breach because they have not reviewed their policies and practices in protecting personal information post-breach,' Gayle says. The commissioner has told Sault Police to review their policies and practices to determine whether changes are needed to protect personal information. He's also given them three months to demonstrate their training materials constitute reasonable measures to stop unauthorized hackers from gaining access to sensitive police records. The information involved in the 2021 attack was indeed sensitive
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