Investigation focuses on security

Last month, Sarasota city commissioners learned that the computer upgrades, on which they spent millions of dollars in previous years, were never installed. On Tuesday, a computer security expert expressed that the lack of upgrades could come back to haunt them.

Sylint Group Chief Executive Officer John Jorgensen told the Sarasota City Commission at its regular meeting Tuesday the city’s “network security status is a great concern to us.”

The Lake County Sheriff’s Office recently hired Sarasota-based Sylint to work with the FBI to combat a computer-hacking attack that had resulted in theft of private department information.

Sylint warned it’s concentrating now on a lack of security upgrades at City Hall to prevent a similar attack here in Sarasota.

“These hacker attacks are occurring all over the country,” Jorgensen said. “Any city that is deemed to be an enemy of these attacks has suffered information losses.”

Jorgensen called the city’s security risk “significant” and said his company has been diligently working to prepare for and install the necessary cyber-security software the city has been lacking for years.

“I have suggested we concentrate our efforts in ensuring the city has the proper cyber security in place,” Jorgensen said.

In an effort to shore up on security issues, Jorgensen said trying to recover roughly 100 of the approximate 11,000 emails that former City Manager Bob Bartolotta allegedly deleted has been put on the back burner. Jorgensen suggested those emails may be lost forever; the lack of email system upgrades and software memory is hampering the company’s ability to find them without a system crash.
The criminal investigation that involves the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the FBI, meanwhile, is ongoing, and interviews continue to seek out information on whether employees accessed emails that should never have been available to them.

Although no charges have been filed and the investigation might take the rest of the year to complete, Jorgensen alluded that the investigations have been worthwhile.

When Mayor Suzanne Atwell asked Jorgensen if there’s been “a smoking gun” so far in the case, Jorgensen said: “I think the interviews have to be concluded. I know that they’ve opened up some different directions.”

Jorgensen and City Attorney Bob Fournier also reported that an independent analysis of IT Project Manager Sandra Coleman’s personal computer, which was used last year to access the city’s computer network, could be performed by the end of the week to see if any city information is located on the hard drive.

The commission already approved an additional $15,000 to $20,000 expense to hire a third-party company to extract any information from Coleman’s personal computer that pertains to city business.

The city has already agreed to pay the Sylint Group up to $113,365 for services in the ongoing investigation. To date, Sylint’s services have cost the city $68,753.

Computer Investigation Background
The Sylint Group was hired by City Auditor and Clerk Pamela Nadalini to investigate a complaint from a city resident that former City Manager Bob Bartolotta and Deputy City Manager Marlon Brown “scrubbed” their computers clean of data.

The findings, which were only revealed verbally, revealed Bartolotta deleted more than 11,000 emails, and the company has not been able to recover roughly 100 of those emails. Bartolotta resigned, under pressure, in February because of the incident but adamantly denies any wrongdoing.

Both Bartolotta and Brown are also alleged to have been reviewing exempt emails and performing numerous email searches to monitor employees they believe may have been conspiring against them, including Nadalini.