City of Columbus confirms a major ransomware attack on internal systems

The City of Columbus in the U.S. state of Ohio said it experienced a data security incident that forced city officials to take several systems offline.

 

Last week, Mayor Andrew J. Ginther

in a post of X, formerly Twitter, that the City became a victim of a cyber attack on July 18 and its IT team was working diligently to recover the affected systems.

 

As a part of the recovery process, the team had to take several systems offline, however, emergency services including 911, 311 and employee payroll systems remained operational.

 

In a recent notice on its website, the City said that its investigation has identified a “foreign cyber threat actor attempting to disrupt the city’s IT infrastructure, in a possible effort to deploy ransomware and solicit a ransom payment from the city.”

 

While the City was able to disrupt the cyber attack, it is in the process of identifying the “amount of city data potentially accessed.”

 

“Once the threat actor activity was identified, the city immediately engaged the FBI and Homeland Security to further protect its systems and data. The incident remains an ongoing situation and the investigation is in its earliest stages. The city is in the process of identifying individuals whose personal information was potentially exposed and will provide notice and additional guidance to all who are impacted in the coming weeks,” reads the notice.

 

In a statement shared with the media, Mayor Ginther confirmed that the cyber attack was carried out by a “sophisticated threat actor operating overseas.”

 

“I’m grateful for the swift and bold action of our Department of Technology, the FBI and Homeland Security to protect our IT systems, our residents and our employees.

 

“We continue to focus on restoring city services. We appreciate the grace our residents have offered us and the dedication of our employees working to keep our city running. We will support a thorough investigation and help to educate other cities on how they can avoid falling victim to similar attacks,” Ginther added.