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A 2022 cyber attack on Fire Rescue Victoria (FRV) continues to have major impacts on the fire service’s operations, resulting in staff returning to pen and paper.
The incident, which took place in mid-December 2022, was a cyber attack by an unknown threat actor that resulted in outages.
“Preliminary investigations confirm this has been a cyber attack by an external third party and that FRV systems are impacted,” FRV said in one of its early releases.
“We have taken decisive action in response to this incident and are working around the clock with specialist cyber security firms and our partners in the state and federal governments, including the Australian Cyber Security Centre. FRV will provide more information as it comes to hand.”
However, over two years later, outages in FRV’s systems have been rampant, having suffered issues on 1 and 2 May 2025 when three different systems failed, as well as five separate incidents within the last week.
One such system was the Station Turn Out system, which alerts firefighters to an incident and dispatches them, opening doors for firetrucks and more. The other major system was Firecom, a real-time information source that advises firefighters on the emergency, nearby resources like fire hydrants and the location of vehicles.
Issues with the two systems impacted the ability of the fire service to respond to emergencies, according to United Firefighters Union state secretary Peter Marshall.
“The failure of these critical systems put firefighter and community safety at risk,” Marshall said in a letter to Fire Rescue Victoria, as seen by The Age.
“Without the Station Turn Out system functioning, firefighters rely upon a phone call to receive notification of an emergency incident to which they must turn out.
“The United Firefighters Union and members hold serious concerns regarding the recurring outages, their impact on firefighters’ and community safety, and the fact that FRV is failing to notify on-duty firefighters of these system failures.”
The outages earlier this month also affected the Fastcard system, which tracks staff at emergencies and jobs, and determines whether chemical exposure has occurred and if staff should receive testing after, and the Station Turn Out system.
This resulted in firefighters using mobile phones and Melway maps to respond to incidents, according to union delegate Doug Lukic.
“We still don’t have all our systems back, [and] the systems that are back, we’re continually experiencing issues with them,” Lukic said. “Issues that are impacting the job that firefighters do every day, and firefighters come to work every day to put their lives on the line, ultimately, to serve and protect their community.
“Lack of information and having to go back to those manual systems, it’s just another layer that you know is just more pressure on the members.”
Following the cyber attack, FRV had its dispatch systems go down for eight months, finally restoring it in August 2023.
FRV has maintained that the outages have not affected public safety. However, as pointed out by The Age, FRV has not met its response target for structure fires (90 per cent under 7.7 minutes) since the first quarter of the 2020–2021 year. The most recent reporting period, quarter two of 2024–2025, saw FRV achieve 86.4 per cent.
“FRV attributes its challenges in meeting response targets to three main factors, including location accessibility, limited resource coverage, and turnout times. FRV advises that as part of its service planning efforts, it is working towards a sustainable approach to service delivery, including the need for additional stations and response units to improve geographic and resource coverage,” FRV said in a quarterly report.
“FRV further advises that it plans to conduct an analysis of station layout and turnout protocols to identify further improvements.”
Additionally, responding to Cyber Daily’s request for comment, FRV said it has plans in place to prevent public safety from being jeopardised and, to date, said it remains unaffected.
“Fire Rescue Victoria (FRV) has been experiencing intermittent technical issues impacting both the Station Turnout (STO) and Firecom systems since 24 May,” a spokesperson told Cyber Daily.
“We are working closely with Triple Zero Victoria and external experts to investigate the underlying cause of these STO/Firecom outages and resolve the ongoing issue.
“When STO/Firecom outages occur, FRV has contingency plans in place which ensure there is no impact to emergency response.
“We continue to monitor the situation and resolve reported issues quickly, usually in under an hour.
“At no time has public safety been compromised, and the community should continue to contact Triple Zero (000) as usual in an emergency.”
It also said that previous outages early in May and late in April were a separate issue and had to do with an overloaded CPU. This issue has reportedly been resolved.
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