Editorial: The North Fork needs to prepare for ransomware attacks

It’s not just second homeowners and deep-pocketed developers who are transforming the North Fork. Hackers have wormed their way in for the second time in four months.

Last week, North Ferry Company’s payment system froze under a ransomware attack, leaving customers unable to pay online while the FBI and U.S. Secret Service sort through what happened.

This is difficult and disruptive not only for residents, but any local company. 

Four months ago, it was Southold Town government, where computers went dark the day before Thanksgiving and police officers went back to writing tickets by hand.

At first, it felt like that ransomware was bad luck. Now it doesn’t look so random.

A few years back, Suffolk County government spent $25 million digging out from its own attack — before even counting the residents whose information surfaced on the dark web.

Southold Town needed cyber specialists to fly in for Thanksgiving weekend to get the systems back online. Those folks don’t fly economy. Meanwhile, a planned $500,000 security upgrade continues to tie up public records.

If a town hall and a ferry company can be breached, it can happen anywhere out here.

We need to start treating cybersecurity the way we treat storms or fires — not as rare disasters, but as inevitabilities.

The solution isn’t easy. Our main defense is diligence.

That means towns budgeting for regular security audits the same way they budget for roadwork. Backing up records offline. Training employees to spot phishing emails. Updating old software instead of limping along for another year. Testing response plans before something breaks, not during.

It also means transparency. When something goes wrong and residents’ tax records, police reports or personal information is exposed, people deserve clear, timely answers.

None of this is glamorous. It’s maintenance. It’s prevention. It’s the digital equivalent of checking the smoke alarms and locking the doors at night. But that’s what works. Because the North Fork isn’t too small or too quiet to be targeted. If anything, that’s exactly why attackers think we’re easy.

The question isn’t whether there will be another attempt. It’s whether we’ll be paying attention when it comes.