The City of Greenville says an August cyberattack that temporarily disrupted some online services did not expose personal data and was not caused by employee error.
According to city officials, the breach—first identified on August 5—was traced to a vulnerability in a third-party service provider. A forensic investigation found that no citizen or employee information, such as Social Security numbers or payment data, was accessed, and no Greenville Electric Utility System (GEUS) data was stolen.
Although GEUS customers experienced the most visible impact, the attack was not directed at the utility itself. The city says it temporarily disabled access to GEUS’s account database as a precaution.
All city systems have since been restored, and officials say critical services remained available to the public throughout the response.
The city confirmed that a ransom demand was paid by its cyber-insurance provider, not with public funds. Greenville has maintained a cybersecurity insurance policy for several years and plans to continue coverage.
City Manager Summer Spurlock credited staff and outside partners for their response.
“We are grateful to our staff and partners who worked quickly and diligently to protect the City’s systems and safeguard our community,” Spurlock said. “We also appreciate the patience of our residents as we took the necessary time to investigate and restore services.”
Officials emphasized that taxes will not increase as a result of the incident and that no city employees were found at fault. The affected third-party vendor has taken corrective steps, the city said.
Late fees and disconnections for GEUS customers, which were paused during the outage, are set to resume in October, with billing expected to return to normal by the end of November.
The city says it will continue reviewing its cybersecurity infrastructure to reduce the risk of future incidents.
