City of Meriden

Summary

Meriden experienced an attempted interruption of its cyber network, prompting officials to shut down the system and shift emergency dispatch operations to a state facility while departments kept hand-written records. The city worked with state and outside agencies to investigate the breach and gradually restored online services, including email, over several weeks before returning the dispatch center to its original location. Throughout the outage, vital records were accessed through neighboring towns and manual data entry was used for later reentry. No ransomware classification was confirmed for the incident, though similar attacks affected nearby municipalities.

Motives

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TTPs

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Description

On February 13, 2026, Meriden’s information technology workers identified an attempted interruption of the city’s computer network and immediately shut down the system to assess any breach. Following the shutdown, city employees in all departments except the public schools were required to keep hand‑written records while the network remained offline. The state Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection responded quickly, helping Meriden transfer its emergency dispatch operations to workstations at the Connecticut Police Academy in Meriden. By February 17, the city’s 911 center staff had been temporarily relocated to the Connecticut Statewide Emergency Communications Center at the same academy, where engineers established radio communications and set up four additional 911 workstations to maintain uninterrupted emergency response.

Almost two weeks after the initial detection, city leaders said they still had no timeline for restoring full network service and noted that a comprehensive investigation was underway. The City Clerk’s office began directing residents to neighboring towns for access to vital statistics software for birth and death records dated after October 1, 2001, while earlier records and marriage licenses remained available at City Hall for cash only. Other city departments continued to record data manually, planning to re‑enter the information once the network returned to operation. On March 3, Meriden began slowly restoring some online services, including email access for a subset of employees, although officials could not specify when full system functionality would be regained.

After approximately three weeks operating from the Police Academy, the city’s emergency dispatch center returned to its usual location at the Meriden police station, as reported by state and local police on a Wednesday in early March. Throughout the incident, multiple officials declined to comment on reasons for the prolonged outage, stating only that they were working with outside agencies to identify and assess any breaches. The ongoing investigation remained active, with city leaders promising to provide additional updates as appropriate.

Sources

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