A little more light has been shed on Augusta’s recent computer issues.
Augusta Mayor Garnett Johnson confirmed on Tuesday that some technical difficulties which started Sunday stem from a cyber crime unrelated to last week’s outage.
“We began an investigation and determined that we were the victim of unauthorized access to our system,” he said. “Our information technology department is working diligently to investigate the incident to confirm its impact on our systems and to restore full functionality to our systems as soon as possible.”
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They are also investigating whether or not any sensitive data was impacted, but have not confirmed any compromises.
Johnson read this announcement from a prepared statement alongside several Augusta Commissioners after discussing the matter behind closed doors for more than an hour. Augusta’s leaders declined to answer any further questions.
The initial technical issues started on May 16, when the network experienced an outage causing the majority of the city’s entities to lose access to their telephones, emails and databases. An email sent to department directors from Tameka Allen, chief information officer for Augusta’s IT Department, noted the unscheduled outage was caused by a power loss which affected the data center. That outage was not the result of a cyber attack or criminal issue and no data breaches were involved in the outage, according to the IT department.
Augusta Fire and the city’s other public safety agencies are continuing to respond to emergencies as needed.