Report: False Alarm in Tulsa Puts CIO on Leave

Tulsa, Okla., put the city's chief Information officer on administrative leave with pay following a $20,000 mistake, the city announced Oct. 1. The city's IT department hired a third party to test its networks and then, mistaking the third party's test for a hacker attack, issued a mass-email warning 90,000 customers that their personal information may have been accessed.

The city maintained that CIO Tom Golliver was put on leave for reasons unrelated to the costly false alarm, News9 reported. "The circumstances surrounding this action are related to a personnel issue, and no further comment will be available," Mayor Dewey Bartlett said.

In fact, the city said, this false alarm will give officials a chance to strengthen its security. "We had to treat this like a cyberattack because every indication initially pointed to an attack," said City Manager Jim Twombly. "From their end, it was a routine scan. On our end, it wasn't routine. We tried to react quickly, but I think we could have handled it better."

Captain Jonathan Brooks of the Tulsa Police Department was named interim director of the city's Information Technology Department.