PEI’s government website, which contains data on hospital wait times, library services and other valuable information, remained down Sunday.
A message on the website said it was temporarily unavailable and directed users to the government Facebook page and other social media sites.
In an email to Breaking:, a provincial spokesperson said the outage was caused by multiple power surges that hit government infrastructure on Friday afternoon.
“The surge protection infrastructure was damaged, but it did the job of protecting valuable government IT (information technology) equipment,” the email said.
“IT and transportation infrastructure staff worked diligently all weekend, sourcing parts and working with their suppliers to ensure the proper level of surge protection is back for the IT equipment.”
Just after 3pm AT, the spokesperson said the website was expected to be back up and running soon.
Library event hit
The response regarding the PEI outage followed the Nova Scotia government’s announcement Sunday afternoon that some residents’ personal information had been compromised as part of a global security vulnerability involving a file transfer service called MOVEit.
The email from the PEI government spokesperson said the issue with the website is “unrelated to a ransomware attack,” adding, “No information has been compromised.”
In April 2018, the government’s website was taken offline by a ransomware attack, with the county initially tweeting that it was a “service interruption”.
On Saturday morning, the PEI government tweeted that the Tech N Talk at the Summerside Rotary Library should be canceled “due to network issues at the library.”
As of mid-afternoon Sunday, the PEI Public Library site was still offline.
