Greene shifts emergency alerts after Code Red cyberattack; city to stand up new platform in mid-December

Public Safety Committee Chair Barb Babbitt and staff told the committee the city’s emergency-notification vendor, OnSolve (Code Red), experienced a cyberattack on Nov. 13 that affected the platform nationwide and limited the city’s ability to send emergency and routine messages.

“On November 13, we learned the Code Red system was, down due to a cyber attack on their platform,” the city’s public-safety staff told the committee. Staff activated backup protocols with the county’s emergency alerting system to ensure emergency messages would still go out.

City staff said they received limited temporary access to the vendor’s Scribe24 platform, but tests showed the vendor’s recovery access did not reliably support text-message delivery — the primary channel for residents. The administration said it has formed an internal response team and evaluated alternatives; the council was told the city plans to stand up a new platform called Regroup and expects it to be operational in mid-December.

Staff estimated the new platform’s cost at around $4,000 (annual) versus roughly $12,000 paid previously for Code Red. The city will coordinate with the county to share registration data and will run a public communications campaign to re-verify resident contact information and encourage re-registration after the system is live.

“Once the system’s live, we will launch a public awareness campaign to encourage residents to register or re-register,” the public-safety presentation said.

Next steps: The administration will finalize procurement and onboarding of the new platform, coordinate data and opt-in options with county emergency management, and provide follow-up communications to residents about re-registration and how to receive both city and county alerts.