Investigations into the data protection breach are ongoing

The city of Columbus’ computer systems are being brought back online as city officials continue to investigate Wednesday night’s data breach.

Mike Richardson, director of safety and risk, said the city’s email system has been working since Thursday evening, but the ability to make payments to the city for some services is not yet available due to the outage that occurred after the data breach at 7 p.m. Wednesday evening.

When the city’s IT department was notified of the breach, it immediately took action to protect and restrict access to the information, according to city officials.

Richardson said Friday afternoon that the investigation into the breach and its extent is ongoing.

“We’re still trying to analyze it and figure it out,” Richardson said, adding that they were looking for ways to prevent something like this from happening in the future.

City officials said no credit card or banking information was compromised in the break-in.

The two incidents, first the break-in into the system and then the Internet outage, were “completely independent and coincidental,” according to a press release sent out on Thursday morning.

“From what our IT department has told me, these are two completely different cases, except that it’s pouring with rain,” Richardson said Thursday.

The case is being investigated by Richardson along with the city of Columbus’ IT department. Neither the FBI nor any other outside law enforcement agency is involved. However, Richardson said Columbus Police Chief Steve Norman has attended city meetings on the issue.

Richardson said the city has not experienced a ransomware attack in which information was retrieved by an outside entity and held hostage for payment.

“No, nothing like that happened to us. No one tried to extort anything as a ransom,” Richardson said.

Reports on social media that data theft also occurred, or even attempted, in Bartholomew County and BCSC are false, according to county and school officials. Some services connected to the city’s computer system, such as the county’s GIS system, were affected, according to county officials.

Bartholomew County’s IT systems suffered little to no damage from the incident, and county employees continue to have access to the internet, said Bartholomew County Commission Chairman Larry Kleinhenz.

Columbus City Utilities (CCU) was not negatively affected at all by the breach because its systems are separate from the city’s core systems, said Director Roger Kelso.

CPD’s internet is also back up and running, said CPD spokesman Sgt. Skylar Berry. CPD can access its email again and the data department can accept payments and accident reports. However, CPD’s reporting system is still being revised and officers’ reports will have to be entered into the system later.