Long Beach City Manager declares a local emergency, anticipating a potential state of emergency.
On Thursday evening, the Long Beach City Manager declared a local emergency, anticipating potential escalation by Friday. This is subject to a formal public meeting with the City Council on Friday at noon PST, where they will vote on a resolution.
Following an initial investigation into Tuesday’s incident, the City promptly identified it as a “network security incident” and took certain systems offline the next day as a precaution. Consequently, these systems are expected to remain offline until safely reintroduced to the network, a process that could take several days.
City officials plan to vote on upgrading to a full state of emergency to streamline services during the ongoing investigation. The City Manager emphasized the dynamic situation, foreseeing potential impacts on critical services.
In response to the situation, the City is considering additional funding for external emergency contracts and services. Moreover, the City actively encourages public participation in the decision-making process through in-person attendance or Zoom participation.
Earlier on Thursday, the City proactively released two news statements on its website: one detailing the incident and the City’s response, and the other announcing the launch of an information webpage to keep the public informed.
UPDATE ❕We launched a temporary webpage & community ☎️ information line to provide, timely, transparent information regarding the November 14 network security incident. Visit https://t.co/9HJfLNf3LT or call 562-570-INFO (4636) on weekdays 8 a.m.- 5 p.m.🔗 https://t.co/pAqyotpvSf pic.twitter.com/tSkc463N9Q
— City of Long Beach (@LongBeachCity) November 17, 2023
While City phone lines may experience delays, officials clarified that the Emergency Communications Center and response units from Police and Fire were unaffected.
Internally, IT teams and external cybersecurity experts, collaborating with the FBI, are actively working to identify the incident’s source and scope. Simultaneously, they are implementing security measures and formulating a comprehensive plan for mitigation, response, and recovery.
Long Beach now finds itself among the third city in California to face a cyber incident. In April, ransomware attacks affected Oakland and Modesto within days of each other. Notably, the Play ransomware gang claimed responsibility for the Oakland incident, later leaking sensitive data. Concurrently, the Snatch ransomware group claimed the Modesto incident. As of now, there is no information on the cause of the network security event, and no ransomware group has claimed responsibility.
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