St. Helena Library not affected by data breach, officials say

A cyberattack on the Solano County Library system this month raised concerns about a data breach affecting St. Helena Public Library.

The library is a member of the Solano Partner Libraries and St. Helena Network, or SPLASH. Hackers disrupted Solano County libraries’ public internet access and internal record keeping and demanded a $100,000 ransom.

They threatened to release stolen data if the ransom wasn’t paid.

But city officials announced Tuesday there was no breach of St. Helena library data.

“The data services company that the St. Helena Public Library uses researched the attack and reviewed all data it stores for the Library,” according to a press release. “It did not find any information showing that data was compromised, and its threat detection system did not find any intrusions.”

The St. Helena library uses a different cloud-based system for library data, and its systems weren’t directly affected by the attack.

City officials had investigated whether there was a data leak.

“The multiple layers of security used by the St. Helena Public Library worked well in this situation,” Melinda Cervantes, Interim Library Director, said in the press release.

“Library staff and the city team will continue to take measures to protect data to the best of our abilities. In this case our system’s required credential process, multiple firewalls, and more were put to the test and passed.”

You can reach Staff Writer Edward Booth at 707-521-5281 or edward.booth@pressdemocrat.com.