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City discusses beefing up cybersecurity following attack on county servers

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — As Mecklenburg County rebuilds its servers after a crippling ransomware attack, the new Charlotte City Council doesn't want to get caught sleeping

>> RELATED: City leaders release ransom email from hackers

Last week, cybercriminals froze files on 48 servers. At his first meeting, new Charlotte City Councilman Tariq Bokhari, R-District 6, called for a review of the city's systems.

"Everyone should have had a wake-up call after last week's breach incident," Bokhari said. "My No.1 item coming out of last week's breach with the county, is us looking internally at our own IT strategy and looking (at) where do we go from here."

>> READ: Ransom email from hacker to Mecklenburg County

A request on the council’s agenda was to extend a 10-year lease of this uptown building as home for the city's core network and server infrastructure. The building on North Myers Street costs around $208,000 a year to lease.

>> RELATED: Charlotte business leaders learn about cybersecurity during workshop

The city estimates it would cost $10 million to build a new operations center.

At Bokhari's urging, the city pulled the item from consideration until more analysis can be completed.

"Signing a 10-year lease without any abilities to terminate the contract would essentially hamstring us," he said.

Bokhari isn't opposed to keeping the main data operations in uptown, he just wants to make sure the city is prepared.

Democratic Councilman Braxton Winston agrees with the delay.

He said the city should do all it can to make sure its servers are secure.

"This is a matter of public safety in my opinion. We should all be taking this seriously," Winston said.

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