Ada County Dispatch
Ada County dispatch cyber incident forces backup procedures
Summary
Ada County disabled computer-aided dispatch after unusual activity in July 2024. Emergency calls and responses continued through backup systems. Public information tools were affected, and later council records documented continuing police and fire reporting effects.
Key facts
Timeline
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First public signal:
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Earliest public indication of an outage, disruption, closure or other observable incident impact. The signal does not need to mention cybersecurity. -
First public cyber evidence:
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Earliest credible public information connecting the incident or disruption to malicious cyber activity. -
Official cyber disclosure:
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First official acknowledgment by the affected organization or an authoritative public body that the incident was cyber-related. -
Last impact seen:
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Latest public indication that disruption, degraded operations, recovery work or unresolved impact was still ongoing.
Primary victim organization
Impacted locations
Organization types
Critical infrastructure sector
DysruptionHub coverage
Incident characteristics
Assessments
Attack mechanisms
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Unknown cyber mechanism
The incident is confirmed to be cyber-related, but the specific attack mechanism is unknown.
Data impacts
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Unknown data impact
The incident is cyber-related, but available evidence does not establish whether or how data was affected.
Operational impacts
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Partial service outage
A service, system, platform, or operational capability remained available only in part or with significant limitations.
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Website unavailable
A public-facing website was unavailable, disabled, or inaccessible.
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Internal systems unavailable
Internal business, administrative, operational, or staff-facing systems were unavailable.
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Application unavailable
A specific application or software platform became unavailable or unusable.
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Records processing disruption
The organization could not create, update, search, file, approve, transmit, or otherwise process records normally.
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Dispatch disruption
Dispatch, routing, assignment, coordination, or response-management functions were unavailable or materially impaired.
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Public safety operations disrupted
Police, fire, emergency medical, corrections, emergency management, or other public-safety operations were materially affected.
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Government services disrupted
Public administrative, licensing, permitting, court, tax, records, benefits, or other government services were materially affected.
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Backlog created
The disruption caused an accumulation of unprocessed requests, cases, orders, records, appointments, or other work.
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Manual workaround required
Staff or users had to rely on paper, telephone, in-person, offline, or other manual processes.
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Staff unable to work normally
Employees or contractors were unable to perform normal duties because systems, data, facilities, or communications were unavailable.
Extortion indicators
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Unknown extortion indicators
The incident may involve extortion, but available evidence does not establish which extortion indicators were present.
Incident narrative
Analyst assessment
Ada County took its computer-aided dispatch system offline after detecting unusual activity in its Emergency Communications environment late July 13, 2024. The sheriff’s July 15 notice documented the security investigation and precautionary shutdown. This establishes cyber involvement and operational disruption, while the reviewed evidence does not identify an attacker or establish ransomware, encryption, data theft or a ransom payment.
Operational significance
Dispatchers continued taking 911 and nonemergency calls and sending police, firefighters and paramedics using backup systems and processes. KTVB’s original report relayed that continuity. The loss of the normal dispatch application should not be described as a failure of 911 call-taking or cessation of emergency responses.
Idaho Statesman reporting republished by Government Technology documented additional effects: the PulsePoint emergency-response information app stopped working locally, and the jail’s public arrest listing was unavailable July 16. Sheriff’s spokeswoman Lauren Montague said investigators were still working through the issues and had no restoration timetable.
Confidence and uncertainty
Star City Council’s Aug. 20 minutes, bearing the mayor’s and city clerk’s signature notation, record Police Chief Zach Hessing describing the July cyber activity and dispatch shutdown. Police reporting data was being manually recreated, leaving the July report potentially inaccurate, and a fire report was unavailable. Accurate police data was hoped for by the end of September; that forecast does not establish completed recovery.
Idaho’s Office of Information Technology Services said in a Feb. 21, 2025, after-action notice that the July cyber incident affected the CAD system for roughly a week. The agency and Ada County conducted two after-action reviews to inform improvements in cyber resilience and dispatch operations. A later public training-course description, identifying Ada County 911 manager Dawn Shumway as instructor, gives a similar approximate duration. It does not establish the precise end of all reporting or other residual effects. The incident is presumed resolved based on its age and the absence of later concrete ongoing-impact evidence. Exact intrusion and complete restoration dates remain unknown.
Analytic gaps
The county acknowledged suspicious system activity and forced workarounds, but did not publicly identify the specific mechanism in the reviewed original notice. Records ordinarily held by dispatch do not by themselves establish a data breach. Comparisons with Akira’s separate Bucks County attack do not attribute this incident to Akira. Ada County Highway District’s 2019 attack and the separate 2025 CodeRed breach are distinct events. Native name and domain searches found no matching claim; that bounded result does not prove no historical claim existed.
Organizations involved
Ada County Sheriff's Office
Locations
Organization type
Critical infrastructure
Impacted locations
Ada County, Idaho
Ada County contains the dispatch center at 945 E. Pine Ave. in Meridian. Dispatchers used backups while emergency calls and responder dispatch continued.
The dispatch center serves Ada County. The loss of normal dispatch software required backup procedures, while 911 call-taking and emergency responses continued.
Boise, Idaho
Boise is served by the affected county dispatch system. Backup procedures maintained emergency calls and responses. The dispatch center itself is in Meridian.
Sources
We reported that Ada County took dispatch software offline after unusual activity and used backup procedures while emergency calls and responses continued.
The county’s February 2024 recruitment bulletin locates its 911 dispatch center at 945 E. Pine Ave. in Meridian, within the sheriff’s Emergency Communication Bureau.
The sheriff said unusual activity late July 13 prompted a precautionary dispatch-system shutdown. Dispatchers continued handling 911 and nonemergency calls and sending responders through backup systems.
The report relayed the sheriff’s precautionary shutdown of computer-aided dispatch after unusual activity. Emergency calls and responder dispatch continued through backup procedures.
Officials said there was no timetable for restoring dispatch software. PulsePoint stopped working locally, and the jail’s public arrest listing was unavailable July 16.
Idaho ITS said it and Ada County conducted two after-action reviews of a July cyber incident that affected the county’s CAD system for roughly a week.
The course description identifies Ada County 911 manager Dawn Shumway as instructor and describes about a week of dispatch-system disruption following the July 2024 incident.
Draft Aug. 20 council minutes describe manual reconstruction of police reporting data after the July dispatch shutdown and an unavailable fire report.
The Aug. 20 minutes describe manual reconstruction of police reporting data after July’s cyber activity and dispatch shutdown, a potentially inaccurate police report and an unavailable fire report.
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