Pierce County emergency alert systems among targets in nationwide data breach
At least four Pierce County cities have been impacted by a nationwide data breach.
The city of Lakewood and Sumner police department both posted on their Facebook pages Tuesday that they are among the hundreds of agencies that use CodeRed – a third-party system – to send out emergency alerts. The city of University Place also posted about it on their website.
Lakewood, University Place and Sumner Alerts allow residents to sign up for phone calls, text messages and emails from the city about natural disasters, road closures, water contamination and more.
Eric Johnson, spokesperson for the City of Puyallup, also told The News Tribune in an email that some Puyallup users will be impacted as well.
“We are no longer using CodeRed and are transitioning to a new vendor called Genasys. We are working out all the details with our new vendor now and getting the system ready for launch,” Johnson wrote in an email to The News Tribune. “We are working on sending a message out to all our subscribers who have been impacted by the CodeRed data breach. Our subscribers should be receiving a message next week with more details about this.”
SPD said the CodeRED outage is happening nation-wide.
“The City was among hundreds of agencies impacted by this nationwide cybersecurity attack,” the SPD Facebook post said. “This breach occurred on CodeRED’s systems — not within the City’s networks, but we want to ensure our users are protected.”
The Lakewood, University Place and Sumner posts all said the data breach has put users’ personal information at risk, including names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and passwords.
“Although CodeRED’s data has not been published online, the City encourages all CodeRED users to change any compromised passwords immediately and to contact credit bureaus to ensure their personal identifying information has not been compromised,” LPD wrote in its post. “If you have any concerns or questions, please reach out to CodeRED directly at crsupport@crisis24.com.”
Lakewood said that if an emergency happens, it will continue to alert residents “through partnership with Pierce County Department of Emergency Management.”
SPD said they “had already begun the process of transitioning to a new emergency alerting system” and will update residents soon.
It wasn’t immediately clear which other Pierce County agencies, if any, were affected by the attack.
Victims of fraud can report it to several agencies, including:
- The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at www.ic3.gov
- The U.S. Department of Justice at www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-fraud/report-fraud
- Their local police department
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include data breaches in University Place and Puyallup.
This story was originally published November 26, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
