Cybersecurity incident in Columbus impacts nonprofit

COLUMBUS, Ohio – It’s been more than a week since the city of Columbus said it had to shut down some of its IT services due to a cybersecurity incident.

As the city works to restore it, there are many groups that want answers, including See Brilliance.

What you need to know

• The city of Columbus said it had to shut down some of its IT services due to a cybersecurity incident
• As the city works to get services back up and running, there are many groups that want answers, including See Brilliance
• See Brilliance is a nonprofit organization that provides educational experiences for youth and families using their STEAM skills.

See Brilliance is a nonprofit organization that provides educational experiences for youth and families by leveraging their STEAM (science, technology, engineering, and math) skills.

Nathan Harris said this is all possible thanks to grants from the city of Columbus.

“We are receiving a total of $70,000 to do our summer work,” he said.

Harris says they have already received part of the grant, but due to the cybersecurity incident that hit the city last week, the second installment has not yet been received, putting pressure on them to find other sources of revenue.

“We have certainly reached out to our donors to make sure that the programs we have already promised are not compromised or further delayed because we don’t want to spoil the fun for the kids,” Harris said.

But Lake Brilliance is not the only area affected. Earlier this week, police announced that their online records portal was closed. Residents are now forced to call the non-emergency number to file a police report.

Brian Steel of the Fraternal Order of Police issued a statement saying, “We are confident that this matter will be resolved soon and that no municipal services will be impacted. Cyberattacks are attacks on all of us and we are committed to working with the city to prevent this from happening again.”

Harris, on the other hand, hopes that everything will be fully restored in the shortest possible time.

“I’m very optimistic about the future,” he said. “And hopefully this will be a learning opportunity for all the municipalities and so on, so that we can take better preventative measures so that something like this doesn’t happen again.”

Harris also expressed concern that if things aren’t fixed soon, there could be delays in payroll payments. The city said the incident happened last Thursday and was not related to the global IT outage.