This Week in the 904: Jax Beach mayor gives update on investigation into cyberattack

JACKSONVILLE BEACH, Fla. — This weekend is the official start of summer in Jacksonville Beach with the “Opening of the Beaches.”

Jax Beach is preparing for a busy weekend with the city working to move past a January hack that interrupted many services.

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Action News Jax’s John Bachman spoke with Jax Beach Mayor Chris Hoffman about what’s being done to prevent it from happening again.

Bachman asked the mayor where the city was in rebounding from the hack and if the city had had any luck determining who might have initiated it.

“So, we really have a great team that was provided to us through our cyber-insurance, and so right away, we had investigators. We had people helping us mitigate the issues, a legal team and a messaging team. This is a very complex type of issue and incident,” Hoffman explained. “When you think about all the things the city has to do, from running your water supply, sending your energy bills, processing parking tickets ... These are all things that are dependent on computers. So, I think that it was a real shock to the system at first. Again, our staff really pulled together and kind of went back to paper and pencil where they needed to, and as far as the average citizen is concerned, now that our electric bills are kind of back out and being processed, I think that for the average citizen, we’re pretty much back to normal.”

Read: This Week in the 904: Jacksonville City Council President discusses funding for the Emerald Trail

There has also been a lot of breaking news out of Jax Beach these past few months, including the possible school closings and the 3 shootings on St. Patrick’s Day.

Bachman talked all that and more with Mayor Hoffman on the next episode Sunday morning on This Week in the 904 at 4:40 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. on CBS47 and 10 a.m. on FOX30.

Read: Jax Beach Mayor comments on beaches’ fight to save neighborhood schools

Action News Jax told you earlier this week when Glynn County Schools’ system reported it was the victim of a cyberattack.

District officials said they don’t know what the end goal of the attack was, and it’s still assessing what happened and how the hackers got into the system.

The district added monitoring tools have been added to help with the investigation.

Read: This Week in the 904: Board Chair Sarah Arnold discusses growth in St. Johns County

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