Jammel Cutler is reporting for Columbia-Greene Media a ransomware attack disrupted email services at Hudson City Hall this week. The attack was launched on December 2, officials said. “It’s a data breach issue that happened with Rackspace, which provides our email hosting,” Mayor's Aide Michael Hofmann said. “Rackspace identified the issue and took action to shut down the hosted web environment. They cut off access to emails entirely. As far as we know, there were no breaches in any of our security data,” he said. As a result of the attack, City Hall is moving on from Rackspace to Microsoft 365, Hofmann added. A ransomware attack locks and encrypts the target’s data and important files, and then demands payment to unlock and decrypt that data. Recently, companies in Texas and France have seen increases in ransomware problems. The attacks can have devastating consequences on businesses, resulting in the loss of essential data and long operational downtime. Rackspace Technology, a Texas-based computer cloud company, issued a statement on December 7: “... Our investigation is still in its early stages, and it is too early to say what, if any, data was affected. If we determine sensitive information was affected, we will notify customers as appropriate. Based on the investigation to date, we believe that this incident was isolated to our Hosted Exchange business." Hudson was a ransomware target in 2016 when the Hudson City School District fell victim to a similar attack. Ransomware is considered a cybercrime and is punishable by 20 years in prison and fines of upwards of $1 million. Read the full story at HudsonValley360 [dot] com.