Costs to deal with City of Hamilton ransomware attack climb to $18.3 million

A new report by the City of Hamilton shows that the cost to repair 2024 cyberattack has doubled from the originally reported expected cost of $9.6M.

The cost of a ransomware attack against the City of Hamilton last year has ballooned to more than $18 million.

Ahead of Wednesday’s city council meeting, Hamilton shared a costing update stemming from the cyber breach that crippled online systems for almost three weeks between February and March 2024.

The updated report says the total cost incurred up to June 30 is $18.3 million. That’s significantly higher than the previously reported cost of $9.6 million in October of last year.

The city says over $14 million of the updated amount has been paid to external experts, while over $1 million each has been put towards infrastructure, staffing, and other related costs.

“Recovery efforts remain ongoing, and future financial impacts are anticipated as systems and processes continue to mature,” the report says.

The city says it has successfully recovered or rebuilt most of the affected systems.

However, they say a limited number of services, including the finance business management application suite, development and permit applications and licensing, fire department records management, public health inspection application, traffic signal systems management, museum collections management solution and the utility locates application, were unrecoverable.

As a result, it says some staff will continue to be affected until all unrecoverable systems are replaced.