Widespread ICBC outage was not a hack or cyberattack, insurer says

Service at ICBC has resumed after an unexplained and widespread outage Tuesday left customers frustrated.

"All systems and services are back to normal. We thank everyone for your patience during our temporary outage and apologize for the inconvenience," an update in the afternoon posted to social media said.

That came after the insurer posted online in the morning saying it had identified and was working to resolve a "service disruption." Customers responded with questions about what had happened and when the issue would be resolved, saying they were having trouble accessing service both online and over the phone.

In a statement to CTV News, an ICBC spokesperson detailed which services were unavailable during the hours-long outage.

"Services affected this morning included issuing new insurance policies and insurance renewals, driver licence knowledge tests and booking new road tests, issuing new driver licences and driver licence renewals, online claim reporting and claim processing," it read, adding that road tests were able to proceed.

Amid the disruption, several customers raised the possibility of a hack or cyber attack, a concern that has apparently been ruled out.

"While we are still investigating the cause, we can confirm at this time that it was not a hack or any kind of cyber attack," the spokesperson said.

"The issue started with a power disruption at our data centre and that had a ripple effect throughout our network.”

Tuesday's outage came after ICBC reported "technical difficulties" with its driver licensing booking system on Monday afternoon.  

Systems outage update: All systems and services are back to normal. We thank everyone for your patience during our temporary outage and apologize for the inconvenience. https://t.co/wWju1yDMq8

— ICBC (@icbc) October 4, 2022