Richardson
City of Columbus computer systems are being brought back online as city officials continue to investigate Wednesday night’s data breach.
Director of Security and Risk Mike Richardson said city email has been functioning since Thursday night, but the ability to make payments to the city for some services is not yet up and running due to the outage, which happened following the 7 p.m. data breach on Wednesday night.
When the city’s IT department was notified of the breach, they took immediate steps to safeguard and limit access to information, according to city officials.
Richardson said Friday afternoon the investigation into the breach and its extent is continuing.
“We’re still trying to analyze it and figure it out,” Richardson said, adding they are looking for means to prevent something similar from happening in the future.
City officials said that no credit card or banking information was compromised in the breach.
The two incidents, first the breach into the system, and then the internet outage, are said to be “completely separate and coincidental,” according to a press release sent out on Thursday morning.
“From what I’ve been told from our IT department, those are two totally separate instances, just when it rains it pours,” Richardson said on Thursday.
It’s being investigated by Richardson, along with the City of Columbus IT Department — the FBI is not involved, nor is any other outside law enforcement agency, although Richardson said Columbus Police Chief Steve Norman has been a part of city meetings on the issue.
Richardson said the city did not experience a ransomware attack where information was accessed by an outside entity and held hostage for payment.
“No, we’ve not had any of that, nobody’s reached out and tried to hold something for ransom,” Richardson said.
Social media reports that Bartholomew County and BCSC also experienced a data breach, even an attempted one, are false, according to county and school officials. Some services that are connected to the city’s computer system, such as the county GIS system, had been affected, according to county officials.
Bartholomew County government suffered little, if any, damage to their IT system during the incident and county workers still have access to the internet, Bartholomew County Commissioners chairman Larry Kleinhenz said.
Columbus City Utilities (CCU) was not negatively affected at all by the breach because their systems are separate from the core city systems, Director Roger Kelso said.
CPD’s internet is back working again as well, Sgt. Skylar Berry, CPD spokesman said. CPD can access their emails once again and the record’s division is able to take payments and crash reports. However, CPD’s reporting system is still undergoing work and reports officers make will have to entered into the system later.
