On February 25th, 2024, a sophisticated ransomware attack struck the City of Hamilton, crippling roughly 80 percent of its network. This included business licensing, property-tax processing, and transit-planning systems. Cybercriminals proceeded to demand an $18.5 million ransom that the city refused to pay.
In April 2025, a new and interesting facet to this story emerged–Hamilton’s insurer denied the city’s insurance claim, citing the absence of fully implemented MFA at the time of the breach.
In an analysis published today, Specops Sofware experts have dived into what happened in this attack, why Hamilton’s cyber insurance claim was denied, and how organizations should align cyber insurance with cybersecurity posture.
David Ketler, Specops Software Cybersecurity Specialist commented:
“This incident isn’t unusual in the tools or escalation chain that led to the encryption of internal systems, but what is unusual is the refusal of insurance coverage due to MFA not being implemented. This goes to show that the cost of not implementing MFA is not just a nebulous security risk, but also a real financial one. There’s now precedent where an insurance claim has been denied due to poor authentication controls.
For full details, the analysis can be found at this link.
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This entry was posted on August 5, 2025 at 11:12 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Hacked. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Analysis: The City of Hamilton Ransomware Attack
On February 25th, 2024, a sophisticated ransomware attack struck the City of Hamilton, crippling roughly 80 percent of its network. This included business licensing, property-tax processing, and transit-planning systems. Cybercriminals proceeded to demand an $18.5 million ransom that the city refused to pay.
In April 2025, a new and interesting facet to this story emerged–Hamilton’s insurer denied the city’s insurance claim, citing the absence of fully implemented MFA at the time of the breach.
In an analysis published today, Specops Sofware experts have dived into what happened in this attack, why Hamilton’s cyber insurance claim was denied, and how organizations should align cyber insurance with cybersecurity posture.
David Ketler, Specops Software Cybersecurity Specialist commented:
“This incident isn’t unusual in the tools or escalation chain that led to the encryption of internal systems, but what is unusual is the refusal of insurance coverage due to MFA not being implemented. This goes to show that the cost of not implementing MFA is not just a nebulous security risk, but also a real financial one. There’s now precedent where an insurance claim has been denied due to poor authentication controls.
For full details, the analysis can be found at this link.
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This entry was posted on August 5, 2025 at 11:12 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Hacked. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.