The Hampton Roads Sanitation District has announced that payment of November and December bills may be made as late as Jan. 31 without a late penalty.
The announcement came in the wake of a ransomware attack against the district’s computer systems that occurred in mid-November and resulted in the shutdown of some of its business information systems. Among the systems that had to be shut down were business email accounts, the HRSD customer call center, and customer self-service. The incident did not affect the functionality of wastewater treatment systems.
The attack disrupted billing across the service region for several weeks, affecting November and December bills, said a press release. It also affected access to customer accounts.
Once all systems were restored in December, said the release, the billing system erroneously added “Payment Due Immediately” messages on some bills, and bill due dates were not adjusted to take the delayed billing cycle into consideration.
Credit or debit c...