Everett City Hall reopens Monday, September 21, thirteen days after the city shut it over what it has called only a “cybersecurity incident.” The announcement came Friday on the city’s social media accounts: regular municipal services resume at 484 Broadway on Monday morning, and the temporary counter at the Connolly Center, 90 Chelsea Street, closes with them. The city has still not said what happened.
What is known
The timeline has not changed since we first reported it. City staff found a problem in the internal network at about 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, September 6, the night before Labor Day. City Hall closed to the public on Tuesday, September 8. The closure was extended twice, first through Thursday, September 10, then through Thursday, September 17. Counter services ran from the Connolly Center from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The City Council met on schedule. Police, fire and the schools were on separate systems and were not affected.
That is the whole public account. In two weeks the city has not said whether the incident was ransomware, whether any resident data was taken, whether a ransom was demanded, or what outside firm it hired. Mayor Robert J. Van Campen’s statements have described “our IT professionals and outside cybersecurity experts” working “around the clock.” No criminal group has publicly claimed the attack. Massachusetts law requires notice to affected residents and to the Attorney General if personal information was compromised, but sets no deadline short of “as soon as practicable,” and the city has said nothing either way.
What Monday will tell
Reopening the building is not the same as restoring the network. The things to watch on Monday are whether the clerk’s office can issue certificates and process permits from its own systems, whether online bill payment is back, whether the tax collector’s records are current, and whether the city posts anything about the investigation beyond the fact that it continues. The Springfield schools, hit the same week, have already told families their data was accessed. Everett has not said whether it has reached that question.
Also from Everett
The city and Everett Public Schools will hold a community meeting on Wednesday, September 30 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Parlin School, 587 Broadway, on options for relieving overcrowding in the kindergarten-through-eighth-grade schools. Everett is one of the few districts in the state still organized around K-8 neighborhood schools, and its School Committee has spent two years on modular classrooms and enrollment caps; earlier district estimates put the overflow at several hundred students across the K-8 buildings. The meeting is open, with questions and comment from the floor.
The Encore strike, meanwhile, is in its third week with no bargaining scheduled.