COLUMBUS, Ohio — A cybersecurity expert told 10TV last week that the cyberattack against the city of Columbus was 100% preventable.
Not long after that statement, the city got a temporary restraining order against Connor Goodwolf. This comes more than a month after cyber criminals hacked the city of Columbus’s database.
The interview 10TV did with Goodwolf happened before the temporary restraining order was issued.
Goodwolf said that based on the data he saw on the dark web, it’s clear Columbus didn’t have a lot of data encrypted and that the databases were linked.
Goodwolf said he thinks best security practices were not used by the city.
He explained there is technology to “flag behavior.” For example, if someone downloaded a lot of information, then it can be automatically flagged and sent to technology staff to look into. Goodwolf questioned if the city was auditing its cybersecurity practices.
“We need oversight for audits being run, best security to adhere to. We need to do more than encryption, but segregate critical infrastructure away from general employee used networks that includes Columbus police,” said Goodwolf. “They need to be considering evaluating their whole technology stance. Follow the best security to see what audit they can do quarterly, what security standards they should adhere to,” he added.
10TV also spoke to Jesse Fox, a communication technology expert who is also a professor at The Ohio State University. Fox also thinks the cities should separate databases.
“It might be nice to have payroll city employees in the same system as citizen information for water bills, and information from the crime database. But do these things need to be in the same place? These are things working in different parts of government,” said Fox.
We reached out to the mayor’s office for a comment.
A spokesperson said the Department of Technology has 162 full-time employees. The spokesperson said since the cyberattack no one has been fired, disciplined, suspended or reprimanded. The spokesperson said “Right now our team of experts in the Department of Technology is focused on incident response, restoration of our systems and preventing future attacks. We are continuing to work with the FBI and cybersecurity experts to complete this ongoing investigation and we look forward to sharing additional information at the appropriate time."
If you have a tip or question about the cyber attack email 10TV at 10investigates@10TV.com.