College cybersecurity expert weighs in on Little Rock ‘security concern’

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Just before Wednesday afternoon, officials with the city of Little Rock made a statement regarding taking the municipal computer network offline due to what it called a security concern.

In a statement from the mayor’s office, aside from the city’s 911 call center and 311 service, all other city emails and network applications are down because of this concern.

Stephen Addison is the Dean of the College of Natural Science and Mathematics at the University of Central Arkansas. He has a history in cybersecurity and said he was not shocked when he read the statement from the city.

“Industries, governments, schools, hospitals there is a wide degree of vulnerability, and the vulnerability isn't really through any high-tech attacks,” Addison said. “Most of the vulnerability that we see today can be traced back to outdated systems.”

The city of Little Rock has not said what prompted the concern. Notices of system outages were first posted to city social media platforms Tuesday morning, but those posts did not mention why the systems were down.