Anchorage police shut down certain servers and cut vendor access after learning a third-party service provider used during a software upgrade was hit by a cybersecurity incident, officials said.
The Anchorage Police Department said it was notified Jan. 7, 2026, as it prepared for an internal software upgrade involving an APD vendor and a third-party service provider that supports multiple agencies nationwide.
In a statement posted Jan. 13, the department said it found no evidence that APD systems were compromised or that APD data was acquired by a threat actor.
The municipality’s IT department shut down the relevant APD servers, disabled vendor and third-party access, and oversaw the deletion and removal of remaining APD data from the third-party provider’s servers, APD said. APD and the Municipality of Anchorage did not immediately respond to questions seeking the name of the vendor and third-party service provider and whether any public services were affected.
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The department did not describe any specific public-facing outages, such as impacts to reporting, records requests or emergency operations.
APD separately warned Jan. 13 that dispatch was still experiencing phone issues with the city’s 311 nonemergency line. Officials said 911 was not affected, and callers who cannot get through on 311 may need to use 911 until the issue is resolved. APD did not say whether the phone issues were related to the third-party cybersecurity incident disclosed the same day.
The department also issued a 311 outage alert Jan. 9. APD has not said when the 311 problems began or whether they are connected to the third-party incident, which the department said it learned about Jan. 7.
The Anchorage disclosure comes as some local governments elsewhere have reported problems tied to police records vendors. In Midway, Florida, officials said at a Jan. 8 City Council meeting that an issue affecting residents’ access to police records had been attributed to SmartCOP and that ransomware was involved. APD has not identified the vendor or third-party provider involved in its case, and there is no public indication the Anchorage matter is connected to the Midway incident. SmartCOP did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether it has experienced a broader incident affecting multiple agencies.
The third-party service provider is leading the investigation, APD said, and the police department said it is monitoring its systems while working with other municipal departments to minimize risks.
APD said employees were alerted by email Jan. 7 and told to watch for suspicious activity. If the department determines protected personal information was acquired, it said it would notify affected people.
In 2021, APD disclosed that unredacted traffic collision reports had been inadvertently published for nearly two years because of a records-system glitch, exposing birth dates and driver’s license numbers for 11,402 people, according to Alaska Public Media.
APD is the largest police agency in Alaska and has said it serves a population of more than 285,000 and employs about 550 sworn and non-sworn staff.
APD said it will continue monitoring for unusual activity while the third-party investigation proceeds.
