The Town of Clayton announced on March 23 that it is investigating suspicious network activity that has affected several of its online systems. Initial findings show that attempts to access data were unsuccessful, and there is no evidence that customer or employee information was compromised.
The incident prompted the Town’s Information Systems staff to work closely with the North Carolina Joint Cybersecurity Task Force to assess and restore systems securely and efficiently. The task force includes experts from the North Carolina National Guard, the North Carolina Local Government Information Systems Association Cybersecurity Strike Team, North Carolina Emergency Management, and the North Carolina Department of Information Technology. The Town also reported the incident to the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation.
Clayton Town Manager Rich Cappola said, “Our staff have devoted significant time and effort to responding to this incident, and I am proud of the work they have done alongside our state and local partners. While the investigation is ongoing, we are encouraged by the initial findings and by the progress being made to restore systems securely and efficiently. We appreciate the public’s patience and understanding as we continue this work.”
According to officials, suspicious network activity was first detected by Clayton’s Information Services Team on March 18. As a precautionary measure, they manually took down parts of their network in order to contain any potential threat.
Investigators concluded that this did not escalate into a full-blown cybersecurity event. Chief Information Officer John Mack said, “You can’t stop every breach, but you can control how quickly you detect it and what you do next. Strong alerting and response processes are what turn a potential crisis into a manageable incident. Because of those safeguards, we were able to identify this activity early and have no indication that any sensitive information was compromised.”
While some services remain limited during system restoration efforts, town operations continue under normal business hours.
