Columbus investigates cybersecurity attack unrelated to CrowdStrike

The city of Columbus is investigating a cybersecurity incident that officials say is unrelated to Friday’s global CrowdStrike outage that affected airlines and many other businesses, government operations and the public.

Mayor Andrew J. Ginther said in a press release Monday that the city’s technology office believes the cause of the city’s cybersecurity problems may be that a city employee opened a malicious email.

The press release states that the Department of Technology discovered “signs of an anomaly” in its system on Thursday that had nothing to do with the global CrowdStrike outage. The department took “quick action” to contain and limit the exposure, the press release states. Among other things, the internet connection was cut off to protect data from being compromised.

Technology officials believe an employee clicked on a malicious link in an email, but the press release states that the source is still under investigation.

The release said the city’s proactive response resulted in an interruption to information technology services used by Columbus employees and residents and that it will take some time to get everything back up and running, but did not provide a timeframe.

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