A cyberattack caused a four-day outage across the shared town and school network in Andover, Massachusetts, beginning Aug. 13 and disrupting email, online payments and teacher assignments.
Town Manager Andrew Flanagan confirmed the cause in an email sent Friday and reported by Andover News. The town initially described the disruption as a temporary internet connectivity issue.
The attack affected both the municipal government and public school district, which use a unified information technology organization and shared network infrastructure, according to the town’s IT department.
By Aug. 17, the town said staff email and other online services were operational, although residents could still encounter technical problems making online bill payments. Flanagan said service was largely back to normal.
Andover temporarily took external email offline, activated its cyber incident response procedures and brought in independent cybersecurity professionals. Town buildings stayed open, phones continued working, and public safety agencies, utilities and other infrastructure were not interrupted, Flanagan said.
The outage delayed Andover Public Schools’ release of teacher assignments shortly before the school year began. A district update said internet and email disruptions continued Aug. 14.
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Officials have not publicly identified the attacker or entry method or disclosed whether ransomware or other malware was involved. It also remains unclear whether town or school data was accessed, copied or compromised.
Andover’s shared environment brought municipal and school disruptions into the same incident. A November 2025 incident in Attleboro took municipal email and most city phone lines offline but did not affect its schools. An April 2025 breach at Fall River Public Schools disabled district internet access, disrupting Chromebook use, attendance calls and state testing.
The town said Friday that the investigation remained ongoing. As of Tuesday, it had not issued another service update clarifying whether the online bill-payment problems reported Aug. 17 had been resolved. Flanagan did not respond to questions from DysruptionHub by publication time.
