Columbus experienced a data breach last Wednesday, the same day as an internet outage, city officials say.
The only information believed to have been accessed are employees’ names, work emails and passwords, according to Mike Richardson, the city’s director of security and risk. He said no employee’s personal financial information was compromised.
All employee passwords were shut down and changed after the breach, Richardson said.
“Safeguards through the City of Columbus IT Department immediately took place to limit access to information,” a July 25 news release states.
Read more: Clay County issues disaster declaration after ransomware attack
Richardson said social media reports erroneously claimed Bartholomew County government and local school offices were also affected, but the breach only affected the city.
The city has not yet identified the source of the breach. Richardson and the city’s IT department are investigating.
“We are working to investigate this isolated incident and taking measures to put further safeguards in place to mitigate future risk to the city’s cyber infrastructure,” Richardson wrote.
Richardson added this is not considered a ransomware attack, unlike recent incidents that affected government offices in Monroe and Clay counties.
Read more: Monroe County server outage tied to BlackSuit ransomware attack
Ransomware is a type of malware designed to block access to a computer system until a sum of money is paid. In this case, no one is asking for a ransom, Richardson said.
The city also experienced an internet outage earlier Wednesday that affected payments, online services and access to city email. Richardson said the outage was not connected to the breach, despite occurring the same day.
He said all services are now back up and running.
