Today released in a special meeting held by the City of Long Beach was information where public systems became the target of a cybersecurity incident. Today Nov 17, 2023, Long Beach City Council approved with an 8-0 vote a recommendation to resolve and ratify the City Managers Proclamation of Local Emergency, addressing conditions or threats of a network security incident that had occurred Nov 14 2023.

Public Statement and Contents of Proclamation

The state of emergency stated and streamlined by the city hopes to strengthen and continue the defense and investigation of the issue, with the end goal of resolving the incident all-together. Mayor Richardson had commented; “Our team is working around the clock to rectify this issue and the goal is always to provide quality public service to our community and make Long Beach a great place to live, work and play.”

The proclamation pushed by the city; allows the City to provide a swift emergency response to protect its systems, preserve operational capacity, and to be able to quickly respond as a workforce to a very dynamic situation that could have significant impacts on the city’s ability to provide critical services to the public. The emergency powers invoked will allow the City to quickly deploy personnel; facilitate additional contract authority if specialized services are needed to be procured quickly; ensure continuity of the City’s operations; and raise the level of purchase authority available to the City Manager To $1,000,000. Including the Purchasing Agent to $500,000 to be in the best possible position to respond.

Contents of the Incident:

The potential cybersecurity incident, targeted internal systems and the publicly available main website. This led to the City and the cities Department of Tech to take down a majority of targeted systems in the early hours of Nov 16. These systems as per the city will remain offline until a resolution has been reached and the threat has been dealt with.

As the situation develops, the Technology and Innovation Department is identifying solutions in partnership with other city departments in order to continue providing critical city services while other services remain offline. Updates are being released via the public social media pages for The City of Long Beach on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) via the hashtag: “#LBAlert”.