City hack updates 'reassuring,' says council president

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- The head of the Columbus Department of Technology gave City Council an update Monday night on the ransomware attack the city is still working to recover from.

The update comes almost two months after that attack, which compromised hundreds of thousands of people's private information, even after the mayor said the data lacked value. 

Columbus City Council President Shannon Hardin called the updates reassuring. 

Watch: Columbus City Council updated on ransomware hack

In his update, Department of Technology Director Sam Orth said there had been slight progress since last week, with an additional two percent of the city’s systems being restored. 

He also spoke about more organizations the city is teaming up with to get answers. 

One of the companies the city is working with to understand and recover from this breach includes Digital Mint, a cybersecurity consultant organization that specializes in ransomware negotiation and incident response. It also includes a company hired to help the city analyze what the ransomware group accessed. 

"RSM, the city's forensic expert, was on site the day the cyber attack was identified and immediately began its work," Orth said. 

He said there are three areas the city is focusing on: understanding the attack, understanding what was accessed, and recovery. 

"We're working tirelessly to secure our systems, harden them against future attacks and bring them back online," Orth said. 

With the additional two percent of systems restored in the last week, the city now has 21 percent of its systems that still need to be restored. 

"They were still able to steal a large amount of personally identifiable information and sensitive data from the city, including crime information from several systems, legacy employee backups, visitors to city buildings and locations of fire department runs," Orth said.  

Even when asked by councilmembers, Orth said he could not get into specifics about what was not accessed but did speak generally about the extent of the breach. 

"I really can't talk about which systems were, were not breached because it might tell the threat actor where to go attack next,” he said. “But I can tell you that only a portion of the city's systems were impacted. There will be more details on that when the final forensics report comes out.” 

For weeks, NBC4 has been asking for an interview with Orth but was told before council’s meeting that he would not be participating in interviews. He quickly left after speaking. 

Orth said he expects the forensic report to be finished in October. Council plans to hold a public hearing then to ask more questions about how the attack happened.