Long Beach To Declare Local Emergency Due To Security Breach

LONG BEACH, CA — The City of Long Beach announced it will hold a special meeting Friday to proclaim a local emergency due to a network security breach discovered this week.

Officials said there is a need for a swift emergency response to protect city systems and preserve operational capacity. The city said the situation is very dynamic and could have significant impacts on the ability to provide critical services.

"Emergency powers are needed to quickly deploy the City’s personnel, to facilitate additional contract authority if specialized services are needed to be procured quickly, to ensure continuity of the City’s operations, and to raise the level of purchase authority available to the City Manager," the city said in a statement.

If adopted, the City manager would have an available purchasing authority of $1 million and the Purchasing Agent will have an available purchasing authority of $500,000. The city said this is needed to streamline and strengthen its ability to investigate and resolve the incident.

City officials discovered the cybersecurity incident on Nov. 14 and the Department of Technology and Innovation immediately initiated an investigation to identify the source and scope of the incident. The city council will hold a special meeting at 12 p.m. on Friday

While the investigation continues, the public may experience some delays with systems and services.

"Out of an abundance of caution, systems will be taken offline effective immediately during the investigation and potential remediation. Systems are anticipated to be offline for upwards of several days," officials said in a statement.

At this time, there is no indication that the security breach has impacted the city's public safety systems, such as the Emergency Communications Center and emergency response from police and fire.

While the city's full website will be unavailable during the investigation, incident information will be updated on the homepage of LongBeach.gov. Residents can expect to see timely and transparent information about the incident on the website.

members of the public may participate in the special meeting via Zoom and may join by:

• Calling 213-338-8477 and entering the meeting ID: 958 2523 6717
• Visiting https://longbeach-gov.zoom.us/j/9582523671