The cyber incident — described as ransomware by the Texas Attorney General’s Office last week — was identified by city officials on Aug. 5 when it prevented the Greenville Police Department and other departments from accessing their records.
While the affected systems were isolated, the city hired a third-party cybersecurity firm to both mitigate the situation and conduct an investigation; and while GEUS’ billing system was among those that were affected, the firm discovered “no evidence that any customer’s personal data was impacted by the cyber incident.”
Now that GEUS’ system has been reactivated. Its employees are busy manually updating the system with customer payments that were made during the outage, whether they were paid over the phone, by mail or in person. For this reason, payments made during the outage may take a few days to be reflected on customers’ accounts.
“No late fees will be assessed, and GEUS will not be cutting off accounts for non-payment in September,” GEUS General Manager Bill Shepherd said in GEUS’ announcement. “We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and appreciate the patience and understanding customers have shown toward our employees during this unfortunate event.”
GEUS also clarified that the delayed August bills will be issued this week and that September bills will be coming out later this month. Also, customers who have selected auto draft services will see their payments made as each of those bills comes due.
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