100% recovery

with zero data loss from ransomware in 2 hours

Avoided

paying $10M ransom

Zero

sensitive citizen data exfiltrated

Overview

Lewis County Public Utility District’s (LCPUD) mission is to provide 35,000 county citizens with clean, safe, and reliable power. To upkeep their commitment of ensuring customers stay connected, their systems and data need to be always on and available 24x7x365.

“When I think about the things that keep me up at night, it’s bad actors getting their hands on our data. In the persistent fight against ransomware, we trust Rubrik to protect us and ultimately, our citizens’ access to power,” said LCPUD’s Information Systems Manager, Jeff Baine.

If our systems go down, our customers could lose power, internet, and telecommunications. So in the event of a life-threatening situation, they wouldn’t be able to reach 9-1-1. Lives are literally at stake. With Rubrik, I feel confident in our ability to serve our customers, knowing their access to power is protected.

Jeff Baine
Information Systems Manager

AS SIMPLE AS 2 CLICKS, RESTORED

Previously relying on three different legacy solutions to back up data, LCPUD made the decision to centralize data security on Rubrik Security Cloud in 2017. A timely investment, the PUD was attacked at 3pm on a Friday afternoon in July of 2019. 

Baine was wrapping up the week when he started to hear unusual buzz around the office. “Our colleagues reported they were experiencing technical issues. Next thing we know, machines started locking users out. It all happened in the blink of an eye,” recalled Baine. “Once clicked on, the phishing email encrypted desktops and servers. We were able to catch it in time and thanks to Rubrik, we restored and were back online in a matter of two hours – no late nights or weekend work required. It never even occurred to me to pay the ransom.”

With Rubrik, LCPUD was able to stop further infection and minimize the blast radius of the attack immediately. “Restoring the servers was as simple as right click, restore. In fact, one of our servers was restored in literally 1 minute and 24 seconds,” Baine exclaimed. “Due to Rubrik’s immutability, we didn’t freak out. We stayed calm, followed protocol, and had confidence we would get our data back.”
 



ZERO IMPACT ON LCPUD CITIZENS

As a lean team with minimal resources, the consequences could’ve been catastrophic without Rubrik, potentially costing the PUD 48 hours of downtime, over $50,000 rebuilding from scratch, and $100,000 in credit card transactions per day. The alternative was to pay the ransom of $10 million in Bitcoin.

“More importantly, our 35,000 customers could’ve lost power, internet, and telecommunications. If there were a life-threatening situation, they wouldn’t be able to reach 9-1-1. Lives are literally at stake,” shuddered Baine. With Rubrik Security Cloud, LCPUD recovered so quickly that citizens didn’t even notice.
 



A BRIGHT FUTURE WITH ENTERPRISE EDITION

Following the team’s flawless response to the cyberattack, Baine felt assured addressing their board to expand their Rubrik footprint. 

The silver lining to this incident was it catapulted LCPUD’s investment in Rubrik, improving their security posture and cyber resilience. It made for an easy sell to their Commissioner and management to upgrade to Rubrik Enterprise Edition to help protect citizens’ data and keep the county's cyber operations resilient. Baine said, “LCPUD is now leveraging the entire Rubrik Security Cloud suite – data resilience to safeguard data with air-gapped, immutable backups, data observability to monitor and remediate data anomalies, sensitive data exposure, and indicators of compromise, and data remediation to surgically and rapidly recover while avoiding reinfection.”

“I feel confident in our ability to serve our customers. Personally, it is liberating knowing that I can take a vacation and our citizens’ access to power is protected with Rubrik as our trusted data security partner,” Baine said.