Hamilton cyberattack must be paid with city dollars

pPublished July 31 2025 at 352PM EDTppThe City of Hamilton will be on the hook for the more than 18 million it has cost to recover from a ransomware attack after their insurance claim was deniedppIn an update presented to a city committee on Wednesday staff said that its insurer denied the claim for reimbursement of costs related to the February cyberattack because multifactor authentication had not been fully implemented for online services when the attack happenedppStaff said Hamilton obtained a thirdparty to review the coverage denial but the review found the denial aligned with the policyppThe total cost incurred to recover from the attack so far is 183 million according to a staff report The city says more than 14 million of that amount has been paid to external experts while more than 1 million each has been put towards infrastructure staffing and other related costsppI understand why Hamiltonians are frustrated this was a serious and costly breach said Mayor Andrea Horwath in a news release on Wednesday ppWe expect our public systems to be strong secure and dependable This incident highlights that the city fell short of that standard and were not okay with thatppThe attackers disabled nearly 80 per cent of the citys network and demanded a ransom of roughly 185 million in exchange for a decryption tool to unscramble the data the update revealedppThe ransom was never paid because the city said doing so would have increased risk and financial exposureppThis was in the best interests of Hamiltonians aligned with guidance from thirdparty experts and law enforcement and is consistent with industry best practices City Manager Marnie Cluckie said in the releaseppWe are rebuilding our IT systems and infrastructure in a financially responsible way applying what weve learned to strengthen cybersecurity and improve serviceppAdditionally the city said no ones personal or health data was impacted or accessed during the breachppMost of the affected systems have been successfully recovered or rebuilt according to the cityppHowever they say a limited number of services including the finance business management application suite development and permit applications and licensing fire department records management public health inspection application traffic signal systems management museum collections management solution and the utility locates application were unrecoverablepp 2025 BellMedia All Rights Reservedp