“The proper authorities continue to work through (investigation),” the mayor said. “We can confirm it’s a ransomware incident. Now much more than that, we’re really not able to confirm because again, there’s other agencies that it’s an active investigation just like you guys report on all the time on more conventional matters.”
Reeves deferred to Police Chief Eric Randall when I asked him what agency is leading the investigation. “It runs through Chief Randall, but other agencies and who’s part of what I would leave and defer to him to tell you who’s operating that.”
I’ve sent an email to the chief requesting the information.
The mayor would not answer my question of whether citizens’ personal data has been leaked.
“Obviously again, we have an active investigation right now,” Reeves said. “We do have protocols that are in place with things like that happen and there’s different thresholds that come with that. So we’re monitoring that we continue to prepare for any option, but these investigations take time.”
I asked him if we could assume no personal data had been hacked since the city would have notified us quickly if it had. He replied, “Look, understand what’s true to us today may not be true to us tomorrow. Okay. And so that’s why what we’re saying is, at the bottom line, we’re going to prepare for any option. There’s an option where that has happened, and there’s an option where it has not happened.”
Before we discussed the investigation elements of the cyberattack, Mayor Reeves touched on the restoration of city services.
“Our IT team has been doing an amazing job, and we continue to hear from outside agencies and vendors that we’re working with right now how encouraged they are about where we are and how we’ve responded to our emergency plan,” he said.
“Just as an example, something that wasn’t as robust in 2019 was our strict priority order of 15 different things that need to beood up. They go in that order in terms of importance, with restored and st the vital things being higher on the list.”
Mayor Reeves explained, “Of those 15, we’ve got five up that are fully operational, another seven that are operational in some aspect and are progressing nicely. And it might be that part of it’s operational, part of it isn’t. And then we have another three to get to at the bottom of the list.”
Yesterday, city officials notified the media that all phone systems have been restored, including the 311 Citizen Support call center, Pensacola Energy, Sanitation Services, and Housing. However, customers still cannot use online bill-pay.