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San Francisco officials move to restore and upgrade city's outdoor warning sirens after cybersecurity shutdown
Summary
Mayor London Breed and emergency staff told the Disaster Council the city will begin replacing aging siren technology that was taken offline in December 2019 for cybersecurity reasons; staff said about 119 sirens will be assessed and a phased procurement is expected to begin within months.
San Francisco officials on Monday outlined plans to reactivate and modernize the city's outdoor warning siren network, which was taken offline in December 2019 after officials identified a cybersecurity vulnerability. Mayor London Breed told the Disaster Council the goal is to restore a reliable, redundant public-alert capability that will work even when power, internet or cellular service are down.
The mayor said the move was prompted in part by recent disasters elsewhere, including fires in Maui, which renewed her commitment to ensure the city has multiple ways to warn residents. "It really renewed my commitment to look into this particular system and the need to bring this system back up to par for the people of San Francisco," Breed said.
Mary Ellen Carroll, who led the council's technical presentation, described San Francisco's layered alerting approach and said the city will focus the initial work on the outdoor warning…
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