City switches alert platform after cyberattack; residents asked to re-register via cityofgreen.org/greenalert

Valerie Wolford, the city's communications manager, told the Public Safety Committee on Jan. 13 that the municipal emergency alert system suffered a cyberattack in November that left the vendor's system unusable for weeks and prompted the city to pivot temporarily to Summit County's alerting service.

"We had decided ... maybe it's time to pivot and move to a different platform," Wolford said. "We have moved to a new system. It's called Regroup." She told the committee that when the vendor restored the old system the city discovered it had lost about half of its contact list.

Wolford said staff will begin a multi-month outreach campaign asking residents to re-register. The city's web form is live at cityofgreen.org/greenalert, she said, and residents can also sign up by texting "join greenoh" to 583399. The platform supports multiple contact numbers and addresses so the city can target alerts geographically; staff also plan to use Summit County's system for redundancy.

Committee members asked how the city will reach residents who were dropped from the prior database. Wolford described a multi-tiered communications strategy that begins with social media and an e-newsletter push, expands in February with a mailed newsletter, and includes an option for residents to call dispatch to be entered manually.

"Dispatch is doing some final testing tomorrow and making sure all the dispatchers are up and it's working on everybody...the website is live and launched," Wolford said, adding that staff would start sending re-registration messages next week and continue repetitive outreach to recover the contact list.

Ending: Staff will start the resident outreach next week and monitor re-enrollments; no formal action was required at the committee meeting.