Harp: ​“We Will Not Pay Ransom”

New Haven has recovered from its brush with ransomware hackers — and emerged wiser on cybersecurity.

So said Mayor Toni Harp Monday.

New Haven City Hall has so far been spared from crippling attacks by hackers on municipal databases across the country freezing (in some case destroying) government records pending payments of multi-million-dollar cryptocurrency ransoms. (Click here for a story about how the Harp administration had been preparing for such attacks.)

But the New Haven Public Schools, which operate a separate computer system, were swept up two weeks ago in a wave of attacks on education systems.

The NHPS system has been fully restored without loss of data, Harp reported during her latest appearance on WNHH FM’s ​“Mayor Monday” program. None of the data in question could identify parents or children, she added.

“We were hit pretty badly. We were down for a considerable amount of time,” Harp said. ​“We had to send our folks [from City Hall] into New Haven Public School in order to get them back.”

Harp said the city ​“learned a real serious lesson: We have to have one system, not two.” The city and NHPS are working on that now, she said.

Hackers launch ​“1,000 attacks a week” on city government, she reported. ​“These people are relentless. On the New Haven Public Schools side, they were not as vigilant as they should be. They are now.”

NHPS did not need to pay ransom to recover its data, Harp said. That fit with her stated government policy: ​“We will not pay ransom.”

On Dayton & El Paso

On ​“Mayor Monday,” Harp also discussed the two most mass shootings this weekend in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas. The mayor, a staunch gun-control advocate and outspoken critic of the rise of white supremacy in the country, called the two attacks most of all ​“a failure in many respects of our behavioral health system.”

“I think it’s a mental health issue. I really do. I think it’s about race. But whenever you’re intelligent enough to know the entire human race started in Africa and that we are all really one people, to begin to hate what is a portion of yourself is very self-destructive,” Harp said.

“Even if it’s driven by racism, it’s not normal behavior to take an automatic weapon and turn it on people, on human beings. Who does it? … It should have a diagnosis.”

In the wake of the 2012 Newton massacre, Harp, then a state senator, oversaw a bipartisan effort to increase funding for social and emotion/behavioral health programs in Connecticut schools.

Dubious On Drones

Harp expressed reservations during the program about a proposal under consideration for police to use drones to track and catch up with riders of illegal dirt bikes. The idea came up last week at a community meeting on the problem.

Harp noted that the fire department uses drones for ​“safety purposes” during fires. Beyond that, she said, she’d like to see the city develop ​“a real serious drone policy before we start unleashing drones in our system.”

Specifically with dirt bikes, she noted that many riders are teens who already drive recklessly. She wondered aloud about the impact of drones approaching them as well.

“It depends how close the drones come to them and if they lose focus while they’re driving,” Harp said. ​“We can’t do things that endanger their lives.”

Also on ​“Mayor Monday,” Mayor Harp discussed efforts to boost small business, with guests Cathy Graves, the city’s deputy director of economic development; salsa/beer maven Alisa Bowens-Mercado; and fashion designer Neville Wisdom.

WNHH’s ​“Mayor Monday” is made possible with the support of Gateway Community College and Berchem Moses P.C.