Hilltop National Bank, based in Casper, Wyoming, took its internal banking systems offline Wednesday after identifying a cybersecurity incident that disrupted online and mobile banking, telephone service and scheduled payments.
Hilltop first publicly acknowledged the disruption at 8:32 a.m. MDT Tuesday, Sept. 8. The bank said at 3:43 p.m. that interruptions to its online, mobile and telephone services were continuing.
Employees had begun noticing problems across the bank’s information technology infrastructure Tuesday, according to County17. After midnight Wednesday, Bill Salvin, a representative for Hilltop Bank and True Companies, said the bank had identified the problem as a cybersecurity incident and shut down its internal systems to isolate the network and protect data.
County17 reported that debit cards and ATM withdrawals remained available under a combined $1,000 daily limit. The limit applied to card purchases and ATM withdrawals together, rather than providing $1,000 for each. Automatic payments scheduled during the outage would not be processed.
Hilltop said it would reimburse customers for charges or fees incurred because of the incident, including those associated with failed automatic payments or checks that did not clear.
At 9:09 a.m. Wednesday, Hilltop announced that all of its branches and offices would remain closed for the day because of the continuing IT issue.
Salvin initially told County17 that restoration could take several days and might extend through the weekend. “Because we want to make 100% certain that when we’re back online, we’re back online,” he said.
In a later Q&A posted at 1:08 p.m., Hilltop said it had no projected restoration time. The bank also said its telephone lines and email remained unavailable and that it had notified the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Hilltop’s website was also unavailable at publication time.
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Hilltop has not said how the incident occurred or who was responsible. It also has not said whether anyone accessed or stole data or whether the bank received a ransom demand. Salvin declined to say whether malware, phishing or an outside intrusion was involved.
Hilltop describes itself as a locally owned community bank that has served Wyoming since 1964. Its location directory lists five Casper offices, two Cheyenne offices, a Glenrock branch and a trust and wealth-management office in Gillette.
Five weeks earlier, Sawyer Savings Bank in New York closed all four branches during what it described as a likely data security incident. Sawyer kept online and mobile banking, ATMs and debit cards available and reopened its branches seven days after the disruption began, after specialists restored and tested affected systems.
Hilltop had not issued a public all-clear by publication time Wednesday and did not respond to a request for comment.
