Columbus approves home-working policy for employees due to cybersecurity incident

The Columbus City Council was authorized to send its employees home to work this week due to an ongoing technology outage caused by a cybersecurity incident that began last Thursday.

The city has authorized department heads to allow employees to work from home on a case-by-case basis this week, said Melanie Crabill, spokeswoman for Mayor Andrew Ginther. She said the mayor’s office does not track the number of employees working away from the office and they do not receive daily updates when the human resources department collects that data.

“It’s not as efficient as we would like,” Crabill said of the challenges the outage has caused.

Columbus City Hall, 90 W. Broad St. in downtown Columbus. The city has been battling a cyber outage for over a week that forced some workers to go home despite forgoing pay.

Employees sent home to work would be paid, Crabill said.

Christopher Moses, director of city social services, said employees are working from home “part of the time.” Depending on their job duties, some city employees come to the office in the morning and leave in the afternoon, or vice versa.

Since there is no internet access in city offices, office workers have to rely on Wi-Fi hotspots, which creates problems. He said decisions are made on a job-by-job basis, depending on what they have to do.

“If they need to go home, we give them that flexibility so they can do their work,” Moses said.

The city’s work-from-home policy requires office workers to be in the office five days a week. Moses said the city’s human resources department does not keep records of how many people are working from home because it assumes the problem is short-lived.

Early Friday morning, Dispatch observed employees apparently leaving the city’s office complex at Broad Street and Front Street with their belongings.

The Dispatch has contacted department heads to ask if they are sending their employees home to work. The auditor’s office said office employees have not been sent home. The spokeswoman for the Recreation and Parks Department said she is not aware of any employees who have been asked to go home.

Scott Messer, director of the building and zoning department, said all staff are working from the office and have access to the system used to process permits, and the system is available on-site. However, he said that because of the ongoing technical issues, it may be easier for staff to access the systems remotely “on a director-by-director basis for their department.”

“I think if I had systems in place to improve access and allow people to work remotely better, I would approve that,” Messer said.

City outage and services impacted due to cybersecurity incident

The city of Columbus continues to grapple with a cyber service outage caused by a July 18 cybersecurity incident that forced the city to disconnect its internet connection, The Dispatch previously reported. The city has so far declined to say whether the cybersecurity incident was a ransomware attack.

More:One week after the cyber situation began: Mayor of Columbus wants to be fully operational again as soon as possible

Some city services have been impacted throughout the week, including the 311 computer system and some web services — the city email system was still down Friday, The Dispatch previously reported. Crabill said the city is confident email functionality can be restored as early as Monday.

Residents can still call 911, the non-emergency police hotline and 311, but some reports may need to be taken in person.

Ginther said Thursday that the city is making restoring its public safety, public health and public utilities departments a top priority in the coming days.

On July 18, the city’s technology department detected an “anomaly” in its systems, The Dispatch previously reported. The department took “quick action” to “significantly” limit the potential exposure by cutting off internet connectivity, Mayor Andrew Ginther said in a statement released Monday.

Ginther said in the statement that the city’s cybersecurity problems may have been caused by a city employee opening a malicious email.

Cybersecurity expert: Outage could be result of ransomware attack

Alex Hamerstone, a cybersecurity expert at TrustedSec, an “ethical hacking” firm, told The Dispatch that while he doesn’t have all the evidence, suspecting that the city may have been targeted by a ransomware attack is still a good idea.

“If you go outside and get wet, there could be a number of reasons, but there’s a 99 percent chance it’s raining,” Hamerstone said.

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