Community Crime Map back online following July 2024 City of Columbus ransomware attack

Davis Beatty
Tue, 14 Jan 2025 04:23:20 +0000
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The Community Crime Map displaying incidents within a 1-mile radius of the Ohio State campus. Credit: Davis Beatty | Lantern Reporter

The online Community Crime Map is available to local users again, after a ransomware attack affected data from the City of Columbus and rendered the resource temporarily unavailable.

Powered by the data analytics company LexisNexis, the map uses data from the Columbus Police Department to display crimes occurring in and around the University District Area. The map was offline this past fall due to a July 2024 ransomware attack, but an Ohio State News Alert announced its restoration Thursday.?

“Now restored, the third-party Lexis Nexis service pulls data from the CPD crime log and populates a map showing off-campus crime reports,” the alert states. “Ohio State preprogrammed the map to a one-mile radius to include the crime reports from the most recent 7-day period.”

University spokesperson Dan Hedman said in an email the map was unable to be populated during the fall 2024 semester because its data was directly pulled from the CPD crime log. According to a July 2024 CPD media release, once the data breach was detected, “the city immediately engaged the FBI and Homeland Security to further protect its systems and data.”

“The Department of Technology, working with federal authorities and cybersecurity experts, has been engaged in a methodical process to ensure that its technology systems are hardened against further breach before bringing them back online,” the media release states.

LexisNexis itself was not impacted by the ransomware attack, Thomas Sizer, senior director of market planning for public safety at LexisNexis, said in an email.

Hedman said the Community Crime Map serves as an important safety resource for students, faculty and their families.

“Having information about crime and crime trends is an important tool, which is one reason Ohio State uses a variety of methods to communicate with our campus community,” Hedman said.

Ohio State has additional resources for the campus community to stay informed about on-campus crimes due to the Clery Act, which requires colleges and universities that receive federal funding to disclose on-campus incidents. This includes the Buckeye Alert System and Public Safety Notices, Hedman said.

Buckeye Alerts are often used for immediate actions to stay safe on campus, while Public Safety Notices are sent when a more severe crime takes place. Ohio State has implemented the Community Crime Map as a supplementary resource to increase the university community’s scope of awareness, Hedman said.

“OSUPD and our Department of Public Safety speak daily with CPD about crime and crime trends and university leadership meets monthly with CPD to review crime data and discuss safety resources,” Hedman said. “We continue to engage with the city to determine what else can be done.”

This article’s headline was updated Jan. 14 at 10:11 a.m. to accurately reflect the target of the ransomware attack.