STEVENS POINT, WI (WSAU) — The city of Stevens Point has confirmed a cybersecurity incident caused telephone and email outages this week.
Mayor Mike Wiza says staff received a Wednesday alert about issues with several servers. The IT department determined there was unauthorized access to the city’s network and quickly cut it off.
City leaders are tight-lipped about the incident on purpose, saying they don’t want to tip their hand or reveal too much about their networks and security protocols. Mayor Wiza says they are working with all relevant state and federal agencies to investigate who may be behind the breach.
“The investigation is ongoing; however, as of [Friday afternoon], we have found no evidence that any citizen data was compromised. We have found no evidence that any confidential citizen or employee information was compromised or captured,” said Wiza. “We are also confident that the affected units have been quarantined and software has been installed to monitor the network for further anomalies.”
Wiza adds that about 1% of the city’s devices were impacted.
Residents should know that emergency services are operational and all critical city functions remain in place. Email and phone services will be hit-and-miss as the networks are restored. Wiza expects it will take two weeks to achieve full functionality.
“Special Thanks to UWSP, their Emergency Management, County Executive Eric Olsen, the County IT team, City Emergency Management, Wisconsin Emergency Management, and other agencies that have been assisting,” Wiza added.
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