Two Pierce County cities have been impacted by a nationwide data breach.
The city of Lakewood and Sumner police department both posted on their Facebook pages Tuesday that they are among the hundreds of agencies that use CodeRed – a third-party system – to send out emergency alerts.
Lakewood Alerts and Sumner Alerts allow residents to sign up for phone calls, text messages and emails from the city about natural disasters, road closures, water contamination and more.
“The City was among hundreds of agencies impacted by this nationwide cybersecurity attack,” the SPD Facebook post said. “This breach occurred on CodeRED’s systems — not within the City’s networks, but we want to ensure our users are protected.”
Both posts said the data breach has put users’ personal information at risk, including names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and passwords.
“Although CodeRED’s data has not been published online, the City encourages all CodeRED users to change any compromised passwords immediately and to contact credit bureaus to ensure their personal identifying information has not been compromised,” LPD wrote in its post. “If you have any concerns or questions, please reach out to CodeRED directly at crsupport@crisis24.com.”
Lakewood said that if an emergency happens, it will continue to alert residents “through partnership with Pierce County Department of Emergency Management.”
SPD said they “had already begun the process of transitioning to a new emergency alerting system” and will update residents soon.
It wasn’t immediately clear which other Pierce County agencies, if any, were affected by the attack.
Asked about it Tuesday, Puyallup police spokesperson Capt. Kevin Gill told The News Tribune via email: “At one point we did use CodeRed. We have either moved away from it, or are in the process of moving to a different system. I’ll inquire with our EOC (Emergency Operations Center). Note, that with the holiday, they may be out and not be able to answer by tomorrow.”
Victims of fraud can report it to several agencies, including: * The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at www.ic3.gov * The U.S. Department of Justice at www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-fraud/report-fraud * Their local police department
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