Gwinnett County

Gwinnett County city reports its own data breach, warns customers

By Audrey Washington, WSB-TV and Lauren Pozen, WSB-TV
By Audrey Washington, WSB-TV and Lauren Pozen, WSB-TV

GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — As a massive cyberattack continues to cause issues for the city of Atlanta, one suburban town is reporting its own possible data breach.

The city of Loganville, which is in Gwinnett and Walton counties, announced in a Monday afternoon Facebook post that it had been victimized — and said that the suspected breach “may involve [customers’] personal information.”

“Officials recently discovered that on or about March 15, 2018, a city server may have been breached by an outside person or entity,” the Facebook post said. “The data accessed may have included personal information such as Social Security numbers and/or banking information. It does not appear that this information was the target of the breach, only that it was accessible to the person or entity who caused the breach.”

All city services are still accessible, despite the possible data breach.

Robbie Schwartz, a spokesman for Loganville, said the city’s “ability to provide services to our customers has not been impacted.”

"The city of Loganville was acting out of an abundance of caution," Schwartz said.

The City of Loganville values the privacy of your information which is why, as a precautionary measure, we are letting...

Posted by City of Loganville - Government on Monday, March 26, 2018

Few other specifics about the possible breach or its potential effects were released. The post did not mention ransomware, which a hacker is believed to have used to hold the city of Atlanta’s online systems hostage since late last week.

TRENDING STORIES:

Channel 2's Audrey Washington asked city officials why it took so long to post the notification about the possible breach. 

"There were a lot of factors involved in the discovery obviously since this is an active investigation we really can't comment further," Schwartz said.

Loganville said it has retained a computer forensics company to assess the breach. It is also conducting “a thorough review of the potentially affected records, as well as its cyber security protocols.”

The situation is now in the hands of a cybersecurity firm.

"Until we have confirmed details from our cyberattack team, to the extent of the breach, we really don't feel comfortable speculating anything more on this matter," Schwartz said. 

The city encouraged those who could be affected to monitor their bank accounts and credit reports.

"Just monitor what you are doing to be proactive in case something happened," Schwartz said.

The city expects to learn more about who was behind the data breach by next month. 

The Atlanta Journal Constitution contributed to this article.

Cox Media Group

0

Most Read