Pulaski County votes to replace Code Red with Rave for emergency alerts after cyberattack

The Pulaski County Fiscal Court voted Jan. 9 to pursue switching the county’s emergency notification vendor from Code Red to Rave, following a November cyberattack on Code Red that disrupted access and left the vendor’s data substantially out of date.

Chris Mason, who together with IT lead Jason Hancock is the county custodian for the Code Red system, told the court the vendor experienced a cyberattack on Nov. 11 that prompted the federal alert gateway iPAWS to pull the vendor’s certificate, leaving the county without reliable alerting for about 60 days. "The system itself is tied into IPAWS, which is the federal system for doing alerts," Jason Hancock said during the presentation.

Mason said county staff reviewed three prospective vendors and found prices ranging from roughly what Code Red had charged to about $7,500 for an alternative; he told the court the biggest problem was data integrity, noting the vendor had reimported roughly 30,000 contacts while the county maintains records for about 70,000 residents. "So with the court's permission, we are gonna explore, and probably make a decision, I would say, by the end of the week, about moving to a to a different provider," Mason said.

Court members asked about outreach during the transition, including using utility bill inserts, flyers with QR codes and social-media posts. Hancock said the vendors the county contacted offered marketing materials and automatic imports from utility and business lists to accelerate enrollment, but that cell-phone contact coverage would still lag because of limits on available contact data.

County staff recommended Rave, which Hancock said is owned by Motorola and is already used in public-safety settings; staff said Rave estimated being able to put the county online in about two weeks and offered a five-year price lock on costs. The motion to authorize staff to proceed with switching vendors, subject to county-attorney review of contract terms and final approval by Marshall Todd, carried on a voice vote.

The court directed staff to proceed with contract review and to report back on enrollment progress. Mason told the court he expected to provide regular status updates as the county rebuilt its alert database ahead of the coming storm season.