Augusta is working to restore all IT systems to normal after a hard reset of user credentials as of Friday.
In a statement, the city denied being in communication with a ransomware group that claims responsibility for the outage and theft of sensitive data for which it seeks ransom.
Instead the Augusta Commission outsourced the tasks as needed to outside legal and IT experts – Mullen Coughlin and Charles River Associates – which specialize in everything from paying ransom to managing the loss of a large volume of data.
“Augusta continues to work with both its internal IT team and outside cybersecurity specialists to ensure the city’s network environment is secure,” a statement said.
Documents approved by the commission stated they assume the ransomware gang BlackByte is responsible for the attack.
A number of city systems that had been inoperative since the data breach around May 19 appeared to be working Friday, including phone trees, the city check register and open bid listing and online tax bill payment.
About three weeks ago, a widespread outage impaired city email, telephones, GIS, jail intake and numerous other functions.
Still no word on what, if any, personally-identifying information may have been stolen.
“A forensic investigation is ongoing to determine the extent to which any sensitive information was impacted by this incident,” the statement said.
