Dallas Fire-Rescue has been unable to provide public-facing data on safety emergencies and response times for six whole months as of August 3.
The Dallas Fire-Rescue (DFR) Incident and Response Time dashboard has not been updated since February 3 — three months before a ransomware attack purportedly targeted City computer systems and became the primary reason cited by the City to explain its subsequent lack of transparency.
The dashboard publicizes data on incidents responded to by DFR officers, including fires, vehicle accidents, and medical emergencies.
Several City of Dallas departments apparently experienced technical issues in the aftermath of the alleged cyberattack, some of which have lasted months.
The Dallas Police Department only restored its daily crime reports last week. Meanwhile, the City of Dallas crime analytics dashboard continues to suffer from information gaps regarding where crimes are being committed, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
But while the hack apparently occurred on May 3, the DFR dashboard is missing information for the three months before that.
When asked why three months of data predating the ransomware attack were missing, DFR spokesperson Jason Evans initially told The Dallas Express, “I don’t have an answer to that question.”
After contacting the DFR Communications & Recruiting Bureau, which handles “technology hardware and software systems,” Evans sent another statement to The Dallas Express asserting the ransomware attack resulted in the loss of data going back to February.
“As Dallas Fire-Rescue tried to restore its data and monthly dashboard after the ransomware attack, the recovery required reverting to previous backups and data after the last viable/stable backup, which was in February,” the statement read. “Any data that is restored from that point has to be manually re-entered, which as you know can be very time-consuming.”
“This is an active project, and we are currently working on restoring July’s Dashboard data and will then move on to restoring the prior months,” the statement continued. “Due to the extent of the ransomware attack and the time-consuming work it takes to manually input months of data, it will be some time before our data, servers and dashboard will be back to what is considered ‘normal.’”
Thursday, August 3, marks six full months since the City supplied public-facing data from Dallas Fire-Rescue to any degree of completeness.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Dallas City Council authorized an additional $3.9 million in spending in June to bolster cybersecurity. The City’s Information & Technology Services Department is also seeking $25 million from the upcoming 2024 Capital Bond Program. More than $140 million of taxpayer money was budgeted for department operations for fiscal year 2022-2023.
