City of Amarillo Avoids Disastrous Cyber Attack but No Email System

The good news is that the City of Amarillo was able to  avoid having their information compromised over the weekend. The bad guys tried to get into their systems and get information or whatever bad people want to get.

I mean that is good news that the security put in place to keep everything safe seemed to work. So no information was compromised. The City of Amarillo is comprised of a lot of different departments. So a lot of different sets of information was safe this weekend.

According to their Facebook post:

The City of Amarillo (COA) identified and prevented a cyber attack over the weekend. Because of COA's robust network security systems, there is no evidence at this time of a data breach, no information was lost, and no ransomware deployed. There was no impact to any public safety service.

The bad news is that if you are use to communicating with them via email you will not be able to do so this week. They have shut down their email system just to make sure their email system is also set. Their IT department will be keeping a close eye on their emails.

So you will need to know these important phone numbers to get you in touch with the correct departments this week.

As you can see there are a lot of departments that could have been hacked. So the fact that they were safe is definitely good news.

All other City of Amarillo systems are operating. The City will be able to issue permits, collect trash, accept utility payments, etc. So in a situation where it could have been a lot worse we are going to just have to pick up the phone this week to communicate.

This is a much better situation to be in these days. Even for those of us that hate to use the phone.