Cleveland City Hall Shuts Down After Cyber Incident

Cleveland City Hall has been forced to close its doors due to a cyber incident that has disrupted the city's computer systems.

The city has not confirmed which systems were shut down, but the Department of Public Safety (911, police, fire, and emergency medical service), the Department of Port Control (Cleveland Hopkins and Burke Lakefront airports), and the Department of Public Utilities (water, water pollution control, and Cleveland Public Power) all remain operational. 

The cyber incident's nature and scope also have not been confirmed as an investigation is conducted. Only essential staff were required at City Hall on June 10, as officials continue to focus on securing and restoring services.

"According to the city officials, the incident was declared when they spotted abnormal activity on their network on Saturday. They immediately followed the pre-existing incident response plans (IRP)," said Ilia Sotnikov, security strategist and VP of user experience at Netwrix, in an emailed statement to Dark Reading. "We don't know the scope of the impact yet, but we can already say that the city has done a lot of right things to minimize the damage."

Those "right things" include shutting down affected services and isolating services that are high risk, as well as monitoring threats with early detection processes.

The City of Cleveland continues to provide updates through social media channels and is available during daytime hours to residents by calling 311.