Technical problem — not hackers — takes out USPS email

Technology

Technical problem — not hackers — takes out USPS email

The U.S. Postal Service is experiencing a nationwide IT outage today that's impacting USPS email accounts and some services at retail locations across the count...

Michael O'Connell@moconnellWFED

February 13, 2015 2:03 pm

< a min read

The U.S. Postal Service is experiencing a nationwide IT outage today that’s impacting USPS email accounts and some services at retail locations across the country. The outage was not the result of a cyber attack, according to a USPS official.

USPS spokeswoman Toni Delancy confirmed by phone that the outage originated on Thursday afternoon, when IT workers were installing new hardware.

“There was no cyber intrusion,” she said, “just a technical problem.”

Although USPS employees are unable to send or receive email from their postal accounts and some retail services are impacted by the outage, Delancy said acceptance of mail, mail processing and mail delivery are unaffected. Scanning operations and track and confirm are also up and running.

As of Friday at 2 p.m. ET, the technical problem has not been resolved and, according to Delancy, affected services will be restored as soon as possible.

Today’s technical problem is different than the cyber breach the Postal Service exprienced last November, when hackers broke into some of USPS’ information systems, putting the personal information of more than 800,000 postal employees at risk.