Cybersecurity breach discussed at Hamilton’s city council meeting

The ongoing cybersecurity breach continued to bring the City of Hamilton to a halt on Wednesday.

It’s now the breach’s fourth day, and Hamilton’s city council held a “closed-door meeting” to discuss the breach, before quickly postponing any other business. This includes the contentious parking lot versus housing debate in Stoney Creek.

READ MORE: Opinions split ahead of final council vote on Stoney Creek parking lot

Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath did not go into any detail about what kind of cybersecurity incident the city is dealing with, however, she did say that city staff and other tech experts are working hard to resolve the problem.

Due to the cybersecurity incident, Hamilton’s city council deferred the rest of Wednesday’s agenda to another council meeting and spent several hours discussing the details of the breach.

Mayor Horwath says they “are bringing all of the experts possible that we can access to help us deal with this situation.”

READ MORE: City of Hamilton enters 3rd day of ‘cybersecurity incident’

Mayor Horwath was asked about what kind of sensitive data if any may have been accessed but responded that it was “too premature to at this point to talk about that.”

She added that the city is working with experts on gathering information to provide to the public.

One of the topics put off until a later council meeting was a controversial discussion over a parking lot in Stoney Creek that was proposed for an affordable housing project. The mayor hopes the added time will allow some councillors to reconsider their positions.

“We have a housing shortage in the city of Hamilton. We need to show our city is at the table with the not-for-profit centre and others as they go looking for more money and one of the best ways of doing that is with city properties,” Horwath said.

READ MORE: Cybersecurity incident knocks out crucial phone, email and map systems: City of Hamilton

Ward 5 Coun. Matt Francis, who voted against developing this parking lot, said, “I think the councillors who voted in opposition to this plan like myself, to build and take away parking lots from them, businesses who said their businesses were going to close down.”

Francis continued to say that he among seven other councillors felt a connection to the issue.

“If that was in their ward how would they respond, and they would definitely stand up for their community as well,” he said.

Francis believes other areas in his ward would be perfect for development aside from the current location.

“I brought a motion forward to have Dominic Agostino rec centre, the affordable housing building built on top of there that was committed to a sub-committee, the Hamilton Wentworth district school board brought a motion on Monday night that unanimously approved the board going and looking at that idea and I’m confident that is an alternative solution that will be a successful replacement for my community,” Francis said.