Clayton, North Carolina, said suspicious network activity detected March 18 led officials to take parts of the town network offline, limiting some services while investigators found no evidence of successful data access, according to the town in statements reported by WPTF and JoCo Report.
The town’s information services team flagged suspicious activity on one system on the morning of March 18 and manually took the network offline as a containment step while staff and outside responders investigated, according to the town’s account. Town officials said initial findings indicate attempts to access data were unsuccessful and that there is no evidence customer or employee data was compromised.
The town said it is operating on normal business hours, but some services remain limited as systems are restored. A Town of Clayton webpage also said a network outage was affecting the phone system.
Clayton said it is working with the North Carolina Joint Cybersecurity Task Force, and the state says the task force supports incident response and recovery for state, local and tribal entities as well as critical infrastructure organizations. The town also reported the matter to the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation.
Town officials have not said who was responsible or specified the exact nature of the activity beyond describing it as suspicious network activity, and there were no public claims of responsibility. DysruptionHub did not receive a response to an emailed request for comment.
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Town Manager Rich Cappola said staff had devoted significant time and effort to the response and were encouraged by the initial findings and restoration progress. Chief Information Officer John Mack said the town’s alerting and response processes helped staff identify the activity early and that there was no indication sensitive information had been compromised.
The incident came days after North Carolina officials urged governments, businesses and residents to strengthen cyber defenses amid what the state described as increased global threats.
Clayton’s response follows other recent cyber incidents affecting North Carolina local governments. In September, Waxhaw said a cyberattack affected some town services and prompted a assistance from the state’s Joint Cybersecurity Task Force. Winston-Salem, meanwhile, reported a December 2024 cyber event that disrupted certain city systems and some online services.
