Data Breach Spurs Colorado Law Enforcement to Seek More Reliable Alert Systems

By: Maggie Bryan | Denver7

DOUGLAS COUNTY, Colo. — Several Colorado law enforcement agencies say they’re either terminating or reevaluating contracts with CodeRED, an emergency alert system, after the company fell victim to a cyber attack earlier this month.

Crisis24, the company that owns the CodeRED platform, confirmed that data including names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, and passwords of users signed up for alerts may have been leaked in the data breach.

Douglas County Sheriff Darren Weekly said his office was not contacted by Crisis 24 until deputies tried to send out a CodeRED alert to residents about a prescribed burn south of Larkspur two weeks ago.

“It didn’t work. Nobody told us that the system was down. And not only was it down for Douglas County, it was down for the state of Colorado, and it was down across the country,” said Sheriff Weekly. “Had we had a major event, a criminal event, like an active shooter situation, a wildfire, whatever, we would not have had, and we still don’t have the ability to reach out to our citizens to let them know what’s going on.”

He said the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office (DCSO) has terminated its contract with CodeRED and hopes to have a new emergency alert platform working in a few weeks. In the meantime, Sheriff Weekly said residents can get emergency updates from DCSO’s social media pages. He said deputies will also result to door-to-door notifications in some emergencies.

Dr. Steve Beaty, a computer science professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver, said if you created a CodeRED account and used the same password elsewhere, to immediately change those passwords.

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