Explaining the American Family Insurance System Outage Today

If you’ve tried to access American Family Insurance’s website or call their customer service line recently you may have noticed some technical issues. The company has been experiencing a major IT system outage over the past few days.

What exactly is going on with American Family Insurance today? Here’s a look at the ongoing outage, what caused it, and when systems may be restored.

Overview of the American Family Insurance Outage

On October 21, 2022, American Family Insurance began having significant technology disruptions across various internal systems and customer-facing services. Some of the known impacts include:

• Website access interrupted or offline completely

• Unable to process payments or file claims online

• Phone systems and call centers down

• Office computer network connectivity issues

• Problems with policy management and other back-end tools

The outages have made it difficult or impossible for customers, employees, and insurance agents to conduct business as usual. Some services have been completely unavailable since late last week.

What Caused the System Outage at American Family?

American Family Insurance has confirmed that the mass technology failures stem from a cyberattack on their network infrastructure.

On October 20, the company detected unusual activity that appeared to be a security incident. As a precaution, American Family immediately took some systems offline to contain the threat.

This quick response protected sensitive data but resulted in the widespread outages as a tradeoff. An investigation involving internal security teams and third-party experts is ongoing.

The exact nature of the cyberattack is unclear. But the pattern of shutting down IT systems aligns with typical response procedures after suffering a ransomware attack.

With ransomware, malicious actors encrypt an organization’s files and servers. But completely powering down computers can stop the activity. American Family likely took this measure to prevent full encryption of their systems.

Progress Restoring American Family Insurance Services

As of October 23, American Family Insurance has not yet provided details on when they expect to complete restoration of all IT services. Some customer-facing systems, such as the website, remain offline.

However, the company states that critical infrastructure like core data processing has not been impacted. Other unaffected enterprise systems continue operating normally.

The technology teams are methodically bringing systems back online as they verify each component is secure following the cyberattack. Some services will likely return over the next few days.

But full recovery could take longer depending on how widely the attackers infiltrated the network. American Family continues to investigate the scope of the incident.

How Cyberattacks Disrupt the Insurance Industry

Unfortunately, cyberattacks on insurance companies like American Family have become more frequent. Often, the goal is accessing sensitive customer information for financial fraud or extortion.

Some key reasons the insurance sector is an attractive target:

• Collects massive amounts of personal data
• Handles large financial transactions
• Relies heavily on interconnected technology systems
• Not as mature in cybersecurity as banking/healthcare

However, American Family states that client information remains secure in this case. The outage stems more from precautionary shutdown than data theft.

Advice for American Family Customers During the Outage

If you need to contact American Family Insurance for any reason during these system failures, keep the following tips in mind:

• Expect delays reaching customer service through the website or by phone

• Try calling during off-peak hours if possible to get through quicker

• Online payments may not process right away – but you won’t be penalized

• Claims can still be filed by phone, even if the online system is down

• Visit American Family’s social media for ongoing updates about restored services

Stay patient, as the company works diligently to get all IT infrastructure back up securely. Within a few days, you should be able to access and manage your policy online as normal.

The Bottom Line

As American Family brings services back online cautiously, customers may continue seeing interruptions for a short period. But the company’s decisive response likely prevented more severe impacts from the incident.