Lifetime Citizen Portal Access — AI Briefings, Alerts & Unlimited Follows
Sandoval County moves to Everbridge after Code Red cyberattack, restores IPAWS alerts
Loading...
Summary
After a ransomware-related outage at Code Red, Sandoval County emergency management said it adopted Everbridge and regained IPAWS authority; officials plan public outreach and redundancy MOUs with neighboring jurisdictions.
Dan, an emergency management official, told the Joint Powers Authority operations meeting that Code Red suffered a ransomware attack last November and was decertified by FEMA, leaving the county without a persistent, county-controlled IPAWS capability.
“Two weeks ago … we came to a conclusion … to go with the Everbridge platform,” Dan said. He said Everbridge was vetted by county IT, dispatch staff and the deputy county manager and is now live at a minimal level. The county also updated FEMA certificates so it “owns the certificates at Sandoval County” and can send IPAWS alerts directly.
Dan said Everbridge can import public contact lists from commercially available public records; roughly 80–88% of known phone numbers should be importable, he said, and the platform supports opt‑outs. He added that Code Red when it came back had only restored about 6,500 contacts, which the county considers insufficient and potentially corrupted.
Officials said they will run a marketing push and publish a signup link once the county is fully live. Dan also said the county is pursuing memoranda of understanding with Bernalillo County and the city of Albuquerque so neighboring jurisdictions can send alerts on each other’s behalf for redundancy if one system goes down.
Why it matters: IPAWS alerts are the mechanism for countywide Amber and public-safety warnings. Restoring a FEMA-certified platform and building MOUs reduces the risk of a single-vendor outage preventing wide-area emergency notification.
Next steps: Dan said the county will continue importing contacts, refine the public outreach plan and work through an MOU arrangement for Rio Rancho and other neighboring jurisdictions; officials did not provide a firm completion date.
