Apex official: cyberattack briefly disrupted billing as town rebuilds systems and replaces meters

An agency official said the town's cyberattack briefly disrupted utility-billing operations and led to delayed bills for some customers while the town rebuilt systems that handle meter data and bill output.

The official described the response as a series of stages: triage immediately after the incident, rebuilding systems while coordinating with law enforcement, and then working through the returned files to restore normal operations. "We had delayed bills, actually a couple month thing," the official said, and added that some billing impacts were tied to the process of rebuilding and integrating new systems.

Because the town accelerated planned upgrades, some work that would normally take several years was compressed into about two years or less. That forced short-term decisions, the official said, including use of a canned, off-the-shelf billing product for an initial deployment. The official said that product does not yet show some meter details for solar customers and that staff are working to customize the billing display to make it more user-friendly.

The official also said the town replaced both water and electric meters and expects the meter and system overhaul to continue through the end of the year. "It's been a headache for our residents. It's been a headache for our staff," the official said.

Town leaders said they are focused on stabilizing billing operations, improving customer-facing displays for solar accounts, and completing meter installation and system integration as the next operational milestones.