In the event that you are placed on hold, please do not hang up. If our call volume is extremely heavy when you call, you may hear a recording, and be placed on hold. The goal is to answer all 911 calls within five seconds. The center's Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) system helps with the dispatch of first responders.

For police-related emergencies, the call-taker takes the information and forwards it via computer to police dispatchers, also within the call center. Calls that require a fire or emergency medical response are immediately transferred to dispatchers within the call center. A 911 call is toll-free and is accessible through residential, wireless, and pay telephones throughout the District.Īll calls to 911 are answered by trained universal call-takers at the Office of Unified Communications. The 911 number should be used to request services from the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and DC Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department (FEMS). A July 2017 investigation by Scripps News on the vulnerabilities of 911 systems noted the case of a 6-month-old Dallas boy who died after his babysitter’s 911 calls were delayed during an apparent denial-of-service attack.Information on this page answers the following questions:ĩ11 is the public's lifeline for police, fire, and medical services in the District of Columbia. But depending on the type of attack and a 911 center’s resources, those disruptions can make it more difficult for people to reach someone in case of an emergency. This 911 system relies on redundancy, meaning that call centers that are taken out of service by a hacking attack can work around the disruption by shutting down the computer-aided dispatch system and sharing information person-to-person, or by sending calls to a nearby center. The telecommunicator enters that information into a computer-aided dispatch system, where a dispatcher picks it up and coordinates a response from firefighters, police officers or ambulances. This is how 911 works: When someone dials for help ─ typically from a mobile phone ─ the call gets routed from a cell tower to a 911 center, where a “telecommunicator” answers the phone and gathers basic information. “911 is the perfect because it can’t afford to be down,” said Tim Lorello, SecuLore’s president and CEO. Meetkumar Desai, who pleaded guilty in an August 2016 cyber attack on Phoenix-area 911 emergency systems. Desai reportedly told authorities he meant his attack more as a prank. The motivations for such attacks are often less about the money than doing damage - sometimes as a form of protest, as when the “hacktivist” group Anonymous took down Baltimore’s city website after the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody, experts say. One of the first occurred in October 2016, when Meetkumar Desai, then 18, of Arizona, distributed a computer bug on Twitter that overwhelmed 911 centers in 12 states. Most of the other attacks involve “denial of service,” in which centers are immobilized by a flood of automated bogus calls.

Two dozen involved ransomware attacks, in which hackers use a virus to remotely seize control of a computer system and hold it hostage for payment. Mike Groll / AP fileĩ11 centers have been directly or indirectly attacked in 42 of the 184 cases on SecuLore’s list, the company says. Robert Mohan installs new radio equipment at the 911 dispatch center at the Rensselaer County Public Safety Building in Troy, New York. That includes Atlanta, which fell victim to a ransomware attack a couple days before the one on Baltimore, scrambling the operations of many agencies, but not the 911 system. There have been 184 cyberattacks on public safety agencies and local governments in the past 24 months, according to a compilation of publicly reported incidents by the cybersecurity firm SecuLore Solutions.

Nearly two years later, the March 25 ransomware attack on Baltimore served as another reminder that America’s emergency-response networks remain dangerously vulnerable to criminals bent on crippling the country’s critical infrastructure ─ either for money, or something more nefarious. “It basically brought us to our knees,” Howard recalled.

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