American Water Warns of Billing Outages After Finding Hackers in Its Systems

U.S. public utility giant American Water says it has disconnected some of its systems after discovering that hackers breached its internal networks last week. From a report: American Water, which supplies drinking water and wastewater services to more than 14 million people across the United States, confirmed the security incident in an 8-K regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. The New Jersey-based company said in its filing that its water and wastewater facilities are 'at this time' not affected and continue to operate without interruption, though the company noted that it's currently 'unable to predict the full impact of this incident.' American Water said it also notified law enforcement of the intrusion.

The company said it discovered 'unauthorized activity' within its networks on October 3 and promptly moved to disconnect affected systems. In a statement on its website, American Water said it is 'pausing billing until further notice.' 'In an effort to protect our customers' data and to prevent any further harm to our environment, we disconnected or deactivated certain systems,' Ruben E. Rodriguez, a spokesperson for American Water, told TechCrunch in a statement. 'There will be no late charges for customers while these systems are unavailable.' Rodriguez declined to state which systems were unavailable and also declined to comment on the nature of the cybersecurity incident.

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