A follow-up now to an exclusive NCN investigation into cybersecurity in Nebraska. 

[View our initial report above]

As we reported earlier this year, in a little publicized 2016 hack an Omaha hospital, Ortho Nebraska, was targeted in an international scheme that cost the hospital and the others a total of $30 million in damages.

Those others: the City of Atlanta, the Port of San Diego and 200 public and private operations.

The suspected hackers, two Iranians, who pocketed an estimated $6 million in ransom, and who are still at large most likely elsewhere in the world.

And that was five years before last year’s highly publicized ransomware on the 55-hundred-mile-long Colonial pipeline which caused gas shortages and long lines at the pumps across the southeast. The attack ending after the company's decision to pay a reported $5 million in ransom.

And then there was the cyber-attack on meatpacking giant JBS, which has Nebraska plants in Omaha and Grand Island, that found JBS paying a reported $11 million in ransom after it was forced to suspend operations in nine locations, including one in Nebraska.

The attacks sparking a new bill from Nebraska Congressman Don Bacon (District 2, R):

Bacon: “What we found was the Colonial pipeline, but also JBS when it was attacked, there was a lot of confusion with the federal government. What was their responsibilities? Which agency is supposed to do what? And we need to get rid of this confusion. This is not going to stop, and the federal government needs to have a game plan for how to defend the private sector.” 

And Bacon, a Republican, is now announcing that his bill has passed the Democratic controlled House by a vote of 315-105.

By the way, as we first reported that six-year-old attack on Ortho Nebraska found the hospital admitting that it paid $2,000 in ransom, but not saying if it would pay again.