Partly Cloudy, 35° F
The City of Powell website, cityofpowell.com, was taken offline for much of last week over cyber security concerns.
On the afternoon of Saturday, Aug. 15, Powell IT Manager Damian Dicks noticed …
This item is available in full to subscribers.
The Powell Tribune has expanded its online content. To continue reading, you will need to either log in to your subscriber account, or purchase a subscription.
If you are a current print subscriber, you can set up a free web account by clicking here.
If you already have a web account, but need to reset it, you can do so by clicking here.
If you would like to purchase a subscription click here.
Please log in to continue |
|
The City of Powell website, cityofpowell.com, was taken offline for much of last week over cyber security concerns.
On the afternoon of Saturday, Aug. 15, Powell IT Manager Damian Dicks noticed suspicious activity on the city’s GoDaddy webhosting account.
Dicks reported the activity to GoDaddy’s fraud department, and the company immediately locked down the city’s account. That took the city’s website offline and halted all inbound email to city employees. The website remained offline until Thursday afternoon.
“Unfortunately, working with their [GoDaddy’s] fraud department was not a speedy process,” Dicks said.
With the website down, the link to the city’s bill pay service wasn’t accessible. However, with bills not due until Sept. 10, the outage had little disruption.
“We did have a few customers call in due to not being able to access our site, and we just took their payment over the phone,” Dicks said.
None of the city’s internal servers were compromised, he said, nor were any customer accounts and the data they hold.
—By Kevin Killough
