Great questions, and you're not the only one wondering about this.
The city has said the online portal and credit card processing are down, but has not clearly stated whether any existing automatic credit card drafts will still run while BridgePay is offline. Because the payment gateway itself is impacted, residents should assume auto-drafts may not process as usual.
Since your bill is due Tuesday, I strongly recommend calling Utilities Customer Service at (321) 952-3420 first thing Monday to confirm your account status and whether any late fees will be waived during the outage. If you cannot get a clear answer in time, the safest option is to pay via one of the in-person or drop-box methods listed in the article and keep a copy of your receipt.
If I get a definitive clarification from the city about how auto-payments are being handled during the BridgePay outage, I'll update this story and share a quick follow-up.
Saturday at 4:25 PM, I got an E-Mail from the City via InvoiceCloud "This is a reminder of an upcoming AutoPay transaction; no action is required on your part."
Palm Bay cannot afford the Cybersecurity bill that would be required to prevent these cyber attacks. Don’t be fooled into believing that we could go it alone.
You're right that standing up a fully independent, bank-grade payment platform just for Palm Bay would be unrealistic. Almost every city our size is going to rely on third-party processors.
Where Palm Bay does have choices is in how much it invests in its own network hardening and how aggressively it manages vendor risk. The city has already proposed a multi-phase cybersecurity and underground fiber project to separate utility and non-utility networks, build a redundant ring, and better isolate SCADA systems, but that request has struggled to compete with transportation and public safety in the capital budget and a prior state appropriation was even vetoed.
So the question isn't "can we afford cybersecurity at all," it's "how much risk are we willing to accept by under-funding it and relying on vendors who have now failed us twice in seven years." That's a policy choice, not an inevitability.
Followup questions:
Do people who have authorized automatic payment by credit card have to do anything?
My Utility Bill is due Tuesday.
Great questions, and you're not the only one wondering about this.
The city has said the online portal and credit card processing are down, but has not clearly stated whether any existing automatic credit card drafts will still run while BridgePay is offline. Because the payment gateway itself is impacted, residents should assume auto-drafts may not process as usual.
Since your bill is due Tuesday, I strongly recommend calling Utilities Customer Service at (321) 952-3420 first thing Monday to confirm your account status and whether any late fees will be waived during the outage. If you cannot get a clear answer in time, the safest option is to pay via one of the in-person or drop-box methods listed in the article and keep a copy of your receipt.
If I get a definitive clarification from the city about how auto-payments are being handled during the BridgePay outage, I'll update this story and share a quick follow-up.
Saturday at 4:25 PM, I got an E-Mail from the City via InvoiceCloud "This is a reminder of an upcoming AutoPay transaction; no action is required on your part."
Palm Bay cannot afford the Cybersecurity bill that would be required to prevent these cyber attacks. Don’t be fooled into believing that we could go it alone.
You're right that standing up a fully independent, bank-grade payment platform just for Palm Bay would be unrealistic. Almost every city our size is going to rely on third-party processors.
Where Palm Bay does have choices is in how much it invests in its own network hardening and how aggressively it manages vendor risk. The city has already proposed a multi-phase cybersecurity and underground fiber project to separate utility and non-utility networks, build a redundant ring, and better isolate SCADA systems, but that request has struggled to compete with transportation and public safety in the capital budget and a prior state appropriation was even vetoed.
So the question isn't "can we afford cybersecurity at all," it's "how much risk are we willing to accept by under-funding it and relying on vendors who have now failed us twice in seven years." That's a policy choice, not an inevitability.