Earlier this week, Mecklenburg County became the latest victim of a ransomware attack that resulted in a shutdown of the County’s IT systems. The Hackers demanded $23,000 in Bitcoin in exchange for an encryption key that would release the files. The County was left with the choice of either paying the ransom and restoring their usual systems or resorting to old-fashioned paper systems. As the deadline passed to meet the Hacker’s demands, Mecklenburg County Manager Dena Diorio announced she would not pay criminals and that the County would rebuild its system applications and restore files and data from backups.[...]