Andover's IT Department asked for $4.72 million over five years to maintain the town's technology infrastructure. Town Manager Andrew Flanagan recommended $2.29 million, less than half.

That funding gap, documented in capital improvement plans covering fiscal 2022 through 2026, is drawing new scrutiny after a cyberattack detected Aug. 13 knocked out municipal and school networks for four days, according to Andover News. Town Meeting approved Flanagan's recommended amounts each year.

The sharpest cut came in fiscal 2025, when the IT Department requested roughly $1.69 million and Flanagan recommended $300,000. That was about 18% of the request, the largest single-year gap in the five-year period.

The IT-3 capital program covers all technology infrastructure shared across town and school departments, not cybersecurity alone. The $2.43 million difference between requests and recommendations does not represent money cut specifically from security projects. The capital plans do identify roughly $440,000 in proposed cybersecurity work during the period, including a $200,000 upgrade and remediation project, a $65,000 firewall refresh and $150,000 for threat-detection systems. Town records do not show whether those projects made it into Flanagan's final recommendations.

The cyberattack disrupted email, online bill payments and other services for town departments and Andover Public Schools. Most systems were restored by Monday, Aug. 17, though some residents continued experiencing problems.

"The Town was well prepared to respond to an event of this nature … That preparation allowed the organization to act quickly while maintaining continuity of public services," Flanagan said on Aug. 22, when he first confirmed the outage was caused by a cyberattack.

A ransomware group called WallStreet later added Andover to its dark-web leak site on Aug. 30, according to Andover News. The town has not confirmed that attribution. Officials have not disclosed how attackers entered the network, whether data was stolen or whether personal information belonging to residents, employees or students was exposed. No breach notification has been publicly announced.

Andover News reported that Flanagan has not responded to multiple requests for comment since the incident.

For fiscal 2027, Flanagan recommended the full $582,000 the IT Department requested under IT-3. That amount, listed in the Annual Town Meeting warrant and approved at the April 28 meeting, included $82,000 for advanced threat-detection tools. Chief Innovation Officer Ryan Knowles told the Finance Committee on Jan. 21 that IT-3 funds "the entire IT infrastructure encompassing both hardware and software platforms" shared across all town and school departments, according to committee minutes.

No Select Board hearing on the IT funding gap has been publicly scheduled.