Hamilton City officials have revealed that the City is tackling a ransomware attack that is affecting many of its municipal systems.
Whiile talking to reporters recently, City Manager Marnie Clukie said legal counsel, insurers and police are involved.
Little else was disclosed about what the municipality is doing to tackle the situation and the type of ransom that may be paid out to the hackers.
Cluckie only said a team of experts is working “around the clock” to get the affected computer systems fully back on track. Meanwhile, it remains ambiguous when that might happen.
She said: “I can tell you though, that we will only restore systems when we are confident we can do so safely and securely.”
She also noted that the city at this point does not believe that anyone’s data and information has been accessed.
She made it known that their key priorities are “protecting residents and minimizing the impacts” of this incident.
Mayor of Hamilton, Andrea Horwath, praised the efforts of city staff who instantly started working to find a solution to this issue via the quick assembly of a team of “extremely talented” cyber experts.
Also, she thanked Hamiltonians for their patience during this “unprecedented situation.”
During the media availability, she said: “Council and I recognize very clearly how disruptive things have been and what a challenging time that has been for the people of our city.”
The Mayor said the city would try to answer as many questions as it could and would give regular updates on the situation when new information is available.
She also promised to discover how hackers were able to access some of the city’s IT systems and hold them ransom.
She said: “Once we have gone to a place where we’ve restored all of our systems, city manager Clucky and our team have committed to conduct a full review to understand how this breach was able to happen based on their findings.”
“They’ve committed to me and the council that they weren’t will ensure that the city puts in place appropriate systems and protocols to try to avoid something like this happening again.”
Hamilton first announced it was experiencing an “ongoing” cybersecurity incident in a February 26 news bulletin posted on the city’s website.
The city however did not reveal the number of its municipal systems that were affected by the attack, which occurred on February 25.
Hamilton did not also reveal what information have been caught up in the breach.
A few days later, the city outlined the areas that were affected. They include: taxes, telephones lines, transit, Ontario Works and Special Supports and a number of other city services like account payable payments to vendors, child care offices, certain online tools for waste and recycling, phone lines for recreation and senior centres, and its mapping system.
Hamilton has cancelled all committee meetings due to the system outage because there is no internet access in council chambers.
Horwath said, for now, “all hands are on deck” as they work to get to the bottom of the cyberattack and added that that’s the topmost priority of Hamilton’s senior leadership and its city manager.
She said: “I hope people understand that it’s not an easy decision to make, but it’s one that is in the best interest of the people of Hamilton at this point and of getting us through this current situation.”
Residents are being told to visit hamilton.ca to get the latest updates.
