Earlier this week, Charles Finlay,  a Canadian cyber-security expert, said every municipality in the country should be prepared to respond to ransomware attacks.

When asked on City Beat yesterday if the City of Thompson is prepared for such an attack, Mayor Colleen Smook said the city has been proactive on this front.

She has more here.

“We use a company called Epic so we have been working over the last three years with them to make sure to upgrade our computer systems, deal with this ransomware as you say, so we’re in pretty good shape.”

Smook says she was at an Association of Manitoba Municipalities convention about three years ago, where it was reported that a southern town had allegedly been hacked and money had gone missing.

That provided an incentive to the City of Thompson and others to put protections into place to avoid a similar experience.