Russell Police Email Remains Blocked Amid Security Dispute

October 16, 2025 by Emma MacNiven

After more than a month without access to email, Russell Township Police Department’s domain will remain shut down, as the Geauga County Automatic Data Processing board voted Oct. 9 not to lift a cybersecurity block.

ADP officials cited ongoing concerns about a potential Russian-origin breach and the professionalism of the police department’s IT vendor as reasons for their decision.

“Our job first is to protect the county,” said Geauga County Auditor Chuck Walder, who sits on the ADP board, during the meeting.

The township police department machines, including a mobile data terminal and a school resource officer’s laptop, were compromised Sept. 8 due to a potential breach from a Russian source, Walder said last month.

MDTs are used for running license plates, warrant checks and writing reports, Antenucci has said.

The potential breach led to a dispute between the ADP board, Russell police department and their vendor, Simvay Systems, after the ADP board shut the police department’s email domain down following the incident.

The form the board asked the Russell police department and Simvay to send does indicate the issue has been remediated, ADP Chief Deputy Administrator Frank Antenucci told the board Oct. 9.

However, the report places a lot of blame on the ADP board, Walder added.

“I would like to see all of the emotion taken out of these reports and perhaps answer the additional questions about, are there other mitigations that were done directly?” Walder added.

Geauga County Prosecutor Jim Flaiz, who also sits on the ADP board, expressed concern about lifting the block after Simvay’s response.

“Instead of owning up to their mistake, being professional with our ADP staff and working towards a solution, (Simvay) immediately wants to launch into accusations and then they prepare a report and dedicate part of the report (to) saying that that one of our employees is unethical, which that particular employee has, has been an exemplary employee, in my view, for ADP,” Flaiz said. “It’s just a pattern of unprofessionalism from the vendor side for this whole incident and so the fact that the vendor had anything to do with the remediation form, I’m really not in the mood to approve reconnecting them … because I have zero faith in this vendor.”

Simvay previously alleged the ADP board created this situation to get money from Russell’s police department. However, the ADP board cannot make money off of townships, Antenucci said last month.

Representative Ryan Patrick, a principal security architect from Simvay, said there is no evidence showing Russell police department’s email is compromised, and the domain block is causing confusion and frustration.

“There is no security reason to restrict this type of communication,” Patrick said at the meeting. “And even in the conversation today, no one has provided sufficient evidence that email communication was ever part of the concern.”

Justifications for blocking the police department’s email domain were never clearly communicated to Simvay, he added.

Antenucci and Walder said they do not owe any sort of explanation to Patrick or Simvay.

Russell Police Chief Tom Swaidner continued to stress that not having access to their email domain is preventing them from completing duties quickly.

“We can’t send an email to the courts, we can’t send an email to the prosecutor’s office,” he said. “So, if I had to get information to the prosecutor’s office in a timely manner, I’m going to have to drive it up.”

There is a system in place to protect the county, Walder replied, adding the standard process is for the ADP board to review the unblock form and determine whether it’s safe to remove the block.

“The reality is, we follow this cycle,” Walder said. “This is a standardized cycle of incident response and it allows for us to analyze the data set that’s brought before us. It doesn’t mean the data set is totally known.”

It is their duty to follow the incident response process, Antenucci emphasized.

“Regardless of what people outside of this board or this county think about our policies, that is our policy, we’ll do that to protect the network,” he added. “So, there might be some consternation over three or four weeks for Russell Township, but obviously, our responsibility here is to protect, you know, $300 million in taxpayer dollars.”

The board — comprising Walder, Flaiz, Geauga County Sheriff Scott Hildenbrand, Commissioner Carolyn Brakey, Alternate Mike Risko, Fiscal Office Manager Pamela McMahan and Antenucci — was contemplating keeping the block in place until after the Nov. 4 election.

“We are currently in an election lockdown,” Walder said. “I can’t, in good faith, recommend this board with a domain block that’s been going on for five weeks, four weeks, that we lift it during an election lockdown and put the county at unnecessary risk with this much activity that’s been going on. I just think that’s ill-advised. Then, we’re outside of the guidelines of the state, and we’re not having the secretary of state coming down on us for something.”

While the election is important, so are Russell Township’s police duties, Swaidner added.

“I think public safety, law enforcement are pretty important,” he said.

Hildenbrand recommended a representative from ADP and Simvay discuss and solve the issue together.

The board unanimously approved a motion to maintain the domain block until ADP staff is satisfied they can safely lift it.

“I get it. (The ADP board is) overly conservative and I’m happy for it,” Flaiz said. “Guess what? Never lost any data. I’ve never had a major interruption, unless the generators never had a major interruption. Whether it’s Russell or Chester or Parkman or whatever, okay, if they’re majorly inconvenienced it’s because we’re keeping our county network safe. That’s a deal to our taxpayers. We represent all the taxpayers and we can’t expose ourselves to make somebody’s life easier.”