PHILADELPHIA – Earlier today, the City of Philadelphia experienced internet connectivity challenges due to an unexpected network issue. The Office of Innovation and Technology (OIT) can confirm that this was an internal technical issue that arose during a planned upgrade and not a cyber attack. 

OIT and its vendors worked quickly to resolve the issue; however, the outage impacted some public-facing systems and operations. The City will share updates on the City’s website as those issues resolve this week and confirm when all services have resumed normal operations. 

“We’re aware that residents and local businesses may have experienced delays and impacts in City services for several hours due to our internal Internet access issues today,” said Mayor Jim Kenney. “I’m grateful to our Office of Innovation and Technology as they monitored this issue and worked to resolve it quickly, and I appreciate our employees’ flexibility as they offered the best possible service in the context of this challenge. Our public safety offices and departments continued  to operate and respond as needed. We apologize for any inconveniences this may have caused and appreciate everyone’s patience.” 

At 8 a.m. Thursday, August 3, OIT became aware that an issue impacting the City’s firewall was resulting in intermittent internet outages across the City’s network. OIT is confident that this was not the result of a malicious actor but rather an issue that occurred during a planned upgrade to the City’s network/firewall Wednesday night. 

“This issue arose during a scheduled upgrade to the City’s security systems, which we conduct regularly to comply with best practice and protect our residents’ safety and privacy,” said Interim Chief Information Officer Sandra Carter. “Our security team uses monitoring software to identify external threats, and continues to do so.” 

The City will continue to share updates on the City’s website online here, and confirm when all services have resumed.