Newsday Taps Nizich for Cyberattack Anniversary Story

Newsday tapped cybersecurity expert Michael Nizich, Ph.D., director of the ETIC and adjunct associate professor of computer science, for an article about the one-year anniversary of the Suffolk County ransomware attack. He notes that the reason the county has taken so long to restore its services is likely because it lacked a written disaster recovery plan. 

“The preparation that’s supposed to be in place in a textbook world doesn’t seem to have been in place at all,” said Nizich, who noted corporate recovery times from such attacks are typically measured in hours, not weeks or months. “In a perfect environment, they should have gone back to September 7 [to their backup systems] and been back up in a day or so,” or a week at most, he said.