Hello Everyone,

By now, staff will have received the message from Chris Steele that the AGO experienced a cyberattack last week. Outlook is back up and running along with other core services. It will still take a little bit longer for remote access services to be fully resolved as the investigation into what caused the attack remains underway. The main point is that there was no privacy breach and no personal or financial data was impacted.

THANK YOU to the IT team for their incredible efforts during the past several days to restore services. Thank you especially to Chris Steele and Kyle Fraser for equipping our IT infrastructure in advance of the attack, which prevented a more detrimental outcome from occurring. You prepared us well to combat an incident such as this.

Also by now, you will have likely heard the news that provincial capacity restrictions have been lifted in many organizations, including the AGO, where vaccine mandates are in place. What this means for us is that we can return to 100% capacity as opposed to 50%, which has been our operating assumption since we re-opened in July. We will do this gradually and safely to make sure our staff and systems in place can accommodate the increase.

Starting this week, we will increase capacity in Picasso from 50% to 75-80%. Thank you to the Visitor Experience and Protection Services teams for pivoting this week. Again, we will make the change in Picasso slowly and carefully.

Both of our ticketed exhibitions (Picasso and Warhol) were totally sold out this weekend. The AGO is bustling with activity and this will only continue as we head into the busy holiday season. It is time for more employees to be back onsite. Again, we will do this cautiously and gradually, beginning in November.

Enjoy the week,

Stephan