Abilene officials say cyberattack disrupted communications but no money lost

At a City Council meeting, Abilene officials reported that a cyberattack on city servers left phones and some computer systems offline but caused no confirmed financial loss.

City Manager Mindy told the council the city’s servers became unresponsive in the predawn hours of April 18 and staff immediately disconnected affected systems and engaged outside cybersecurity experts. “There was no money lost,” Mindy said. “We are still dealing with no computers, no phones.”

The update said emergency services continued to operate during the outage and that water, police and fire services were functional. Mayor Hurt thanked city employees for extended hours working to restore communications and said the meeting would be conducted with roll call votes because the city’s usual systems, including the meeting livestream and interpreter, were not available.

Mindy said the city is working “tirelessly” with industry experts to restore full services and that recordings of the meeting would be streamed later. She asked for patience from residents while systems are restored.

No formal action or vote was taken on the cybersecurity update during the meeting. The city manager indicated the investigation and recovery work were ongoing and that the city would provide further updates as they become available.