Fire Rescue Victoria investigating security incident

Fire Rescue Victoria has confirmed its IT outage is the result of a cyber-attack.

Yesterday, the agency announced an outage affecting its dispatch system, its phones, Internet access and e-mail.

Acting commissioner Gavin Freeman told a press conference yesterday afternoon the systems could be offline for “three or four days”.

“In the early hours of [Thursday] morning FRV became aware of an IT outage of our systems,” he said.

“It was somewhere around four or five [in the] morning I got the phone call," he said, adding that the decision to shut down the systems was made at 7.30 am.

“Our systems have been compromised … we’ve called in assistance from the wider government and the federal government."

The agency is using radios, mobile phones, and pagers to “get the fire trucks out the door”.

Freeman didn’t say whether it was a ransomware attack, but said: “I’m not aware of any contact from anybody. We’re still trying to investigate what has caused this.

“We’ll provide further information as soon as we know about it.”

Update: at 11:26am on Friday, FRV confirmed that the outage was cased by a cyber attack.

“Preliminary investigations confirm this has been a cyber attack by an external third party and that FRV systems are impacted”, its statement said.

“We have taken decisive action in response to this incident and are working around the clock with specialist cyber security firms and our partners in the State and Federal Governments, including the Australian Cyber Security Centre. 

“FRV will provide more information as it comes to hand.”