Fort St. John waives late utility penalties due to cyber attack delays

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A server rack with several red ethernet cables plugged into it. — As the city recovers from a ransomware attack, late fees on utilities are being waived in Fort St. John. (Unsplash)

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — Fort St. John residents will have a bit of extra time to pay their utility bills thanks to last month’s cyberattack.

The city posted to Facebook on March 13th that, due to the cyber attack impacting its network and disabling some services, staff members have fallen behind on generating and mailing utility bills.

The next round of bills is reportedly set to be mailed between March 17th and 21st, and the city will waive late penalties for the February billing cycle, which is due March 31st.

The incident, later confirmed to be a ransomware attack, led to many city services becoming temporarily unavailable and a small subset of city data being stolen by hackers.

According to the latest update regarding the cyber attack, most city services have been restored but some are still unavailable, including the My City Hall platform for paying utility bills online.

City staff members say the data taken has been restored and is being assessed, but it’s unlikely that any residents’ personal information was compromised.

Communications manager Ryan Harvey says the city will notify residents when the My City Hall portal is back online.