The city is also still unable to process pre-authorized payments for resident taxes, meaning that withdrawals will be delayed and the city will be temporarily short of tax dollars. Pictured: Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath. Photo Credit: Andrea Horwath/X
The City of Hamilton issued a press release last Thursday announcing that the municipality’s response to the ongoing cybersecurity attack has shifted “from incident response to the recovery and rebuilding” of IT systems.
However, at a press conference the next day, City Manager Marnie Cluckie said that restoring some systems will still take “weeks or months.”
Indeed, despite the announcement that the city is now in the “recovery” stage, Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath said: “This continues to be an ongoing incident. It’s not over yet.”
The city’s dedicated webpage to inform Hamiltonians about systems impacted by the attack, www.hamilton.ca/cyberincident, continues to show that there are still far-reaching impacts.
Thus, it would suggest that the shift to recovery is very much simply an operational shift for those who are working on restoring the city’s systems, rather than an announcement that city services have already been fixed.
Online portals such as business licensing, building permits, zoning verification and property reports, job applications, marriage license applications, and public health inspection results all remain down.
Bus operators continue to drive without the aid of the computerized onboard schedule, meaning there is greater variance with regard to when buses arrive at their stops.
Bus stop annunciators on board buses are also still not operational.
The city is also still unable to process pre-authorized payments for resident taxes, meaning that withdrawals will be delayed and the city will be temporarily short of tax dollars.
Registration for the city’s spring recreation programs is also paused until further notice, with the city’s recreation department “providing drop-in programs (e.g. drop-in pool, skating, basketball, etc.) free of charge.”
Even city Council and Committee meetings are still on hold until Wednesday, March 27 as the city works to “resolve some of the technology challenges posed by the Cybersecurity Incident.”
That means that Council meetings will have been on hold for over a month by the time they finally start up again, with the cyberattack having begun on February 25.
Horwath also informed the public on Friday that the city has not paid a ransom to the perpetrators of the cyberattack.
There was some speculation that the city might be negotiating with the attackers since previous questions from the media about those details were not directly answered by officials.
On March 5, when asked if the city would consider paying any sort of ransom, Cluckie said, “I can assure you we are going to do what is best for the city.”
Officials also confirmed again that they still “have no evidence that personal data has been accessed and compromised.”
However, it still remains unclear how much the incident and the recovery process has cost the city.
Officials previously said that Toronto-based cybersecurity company CYPFER has been retained to provide “forensic investigation and incident response.”
The company is believed to still be working with the city.
Meanwhile, the city’s website continues to state that “a timeline for recovery is not yet known.”
The city will also reportedly be conducting a “full review” of the incident when systems are up and running again.
Based in Hamilton, he reaches hundreds of thousands of people monthly on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. He has been published in The Hamilton Spectator, Stoney Creek News, and Bay Observer. He has also been a segment host with Cable 14 Hamilton. In 2017, he received the Chancellor Full Tuition Scholarship from the University of Ottawa (BA, 2022). He has also received the Governor General’s Academic Medal. He formerly worked in a non-partisan role on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
