Investigation into Calgary Public Library cybersecurity breach 'still early days': Officials

As officials with the Calgary Public Library (CPL) prepare to reopen locations on Wednesday, many questions about the cybersecurity breach that closed them remain unanswered.

The breach prompted the CPL to shutter locations across the city on Friday.

Though officials said early on that some systems were compromised, Mary Kapusta, director of communications and engagement at the Calgary Public Library, says it isn't yet clear exactly what happened.

"It's still early days, when you think about the level of investigation," she said.

"We have our technology team and a roster of security consultants who are working for us to complete the containment procedures and understand what can safely come back online, then understand what happened."

When libraries reopen on Wednesday, they'll have modified services that will see patrons able to access library space and amenities that don't require technology.

Kapusta says the library sees 20,000 in-person visitors daily and another 20,000 digitally.

In total, they have more than 800,000 active members.

"About 59 percent of Calgarians are active library users, so that you can understand the scale of the impact to our physical and our digital visitors."

University of Calgary computer security professor Tom Keenan says libraries can be an easy target for cyber criminals.

"It's actually a treasure trove of information for the bad guys," he said.  

"We don't know who has this data, what they want to do with it, if they're going to try to ransomware or anything like that, we just know it's a bad thing."

The cyber attack happened just days after the CPL opened a new location in Skyview Ranch focusing on digital resources.

"If they really want to be digital first, they're going to have to improve their security," Keenan said.

"If you think about it, if you are the library and you can spend money on better IT security or a new branch or more books or something, what are you going to do? The cybersecurity budget tends to be pretty hard to get money for."

The CPL says it will provide more information on the cybersecurity breach as it becomes available.

The Calgary Police Service says it's not involved in the CPL's investigation.