Why is the Bankruptcy Noticing Center down?
The BNC is down nationwide because of a cybersecurity incident at BAE Systems, the contractor that runs it for the judiciary. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts confirmed the incident on October 15 and said BAE is investigating and working to restore service. No restoration date has been given.
The BNC produces and delivers court notices for every bankruptcy court: notices of commencement and 341 meetings, orders, discharges, and dismissals. Right now, all of it is offline:
- BNC notice production and delivery, both paper mail and EBN email
- The BNC websites, including bnc.uscourts.gov, bankruptcynotices.uscourts.gov and notices.uscourts.gov
- The National Creditor Registration Service (NCRS), where creditors register their preferred notice addresses
- CM/ECF access to the standard three-column mailing matrix, which depends on NCRS
The courts themselves are still working. CM/ECF and PACER are up, cases are being filed and opened, and registered e-filers still receive Notices of Electronic Filing. The District of Alaska shows how far the ripple goes: its clerk is mailing orders by hand to non-electronic parties, and 341 meetings for cases filed on or after this cybersecurity incident will not be set until the BNC returns.
What we don't know yet: what kind of incident this is, whether any notice content or recipient data was compromised, and when service will come back.
How does the BNC outage affect creditors?
If BNC notices are how you learn about bankruptcies, every filing since October 9 is a potential blind spot. Here is where that exposure shows up.
- You don't know who filed. New cases are being opened every day, but the notices that would tell you about them may not be going out. Many accounts with bankruptcies filed this week look like any other account in your system.
- Automatic stay exposure. The automatic stay takes effect the moment a case is filed, whether or not you received a notice. Calls, letters, payment pulls, repossessions, and credit reporting on those accounts may be continuing right now, and each one is a potential stay violation.
- Deadlines are still running. Courts have said the outage does not extend filing deadlines or postpone hearings. Proof of claim bar dates, objection windows, reaffirmation timelines, and 341 meetings stand unless a judge orders otherwise. Any extension must be requested case by case.
- Service gaps. With NCRS offline, pleadings served during the outage may not reach the preferred address you registered. Courts warn the substitute creditor list in CM/ECF may omit addresses registered through EBN or NCRS.
- A backlog is coming. When the BNC is restored, more than a week of paper and EBN notices is likely to arrive at once. Teams that wait will be triaging a flood with deadlines already in motion.
- A security question mark. Many creditors feed BNC notice files straight into their core systems. That channel's operator now has an active cybersecurity incident, and nothing public yet says how long it was underway or what it touched. There is no confirmed data breach, but the courts' own advice applies: do not rely on BNC confirmations, and verify what you receive against the docket.
What should creditors do while the BNC is down?
Whatever tools you use, these steps reduce your exposure while the BNC is down.
- Treat October 9 as your gap date. Assume any account could have filed since then and that you have not been told.
- Check the docket, not your inbox. Courts recommend verifying hearings, deadlines, and orders directly in CM/ECF or PACER rather than relying on BNC confirmations.
- Scrub your highest-risk accounts first. Prioritize accounts with active collection, scheduled payment pulls, pending repossession or litigation, and recent delinquency.
- Pause or review automated actions. Consider holding automated collection steps on flagged accounts until you have confirmed their bankruptcy status.
- Calendar deadlines from the docket. Pull bar dates and objection deadlines directly via CM/ECF, and request relief from the court promptly if the outage caused you to miss something.
- Plan for the backlog. Staff up for the day the BNC returns, and decide now how you will reconcile those notices against what you have already found.
- Watch for updates on BankruptcyWatch.com. BankruptcyWatch will be monitoring the situation and posting updates. Regularly check our website for updates.
The catch: PACER recommends manual searching dockets and other fee-based reports. This is not really a good solution that scales for large portfolios. Automated monitoring solves that problem.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Talk with your counsel about your specific obligations.
How to monitor bankruptcies without the BNC
BankruptcyWatch connects directly to the federal court system, so our monitoring never depends on the BNC. While notices became unreliable starting October 9, our clients continue to receive bankruptcy alerts without interruption.
- We go to the source. Our software monitors consumers through the courts themselves, then notifies you based on what the court record shows. No noticing center sits in the middle, so there is no single point of failure between a filing and your team.
- We see filings court notices miss. Even on a normal day, a BNC notice reaches you only if the debtor listed you under the right name and address. Debtors leave creditors off, use an old servicer name, or list the wrong address all the time. BankruptcyWatch pulls every new filing, every day, and compares it against your portfolio. We detect the filing whether or not, and however, you are listed on it.
- We backfill what you missed. Our historic bankruptcy scrub runs your full portfolio against existing cases, so filings from the outage window, and anything that slipped through before it, surface right away.
- We work with the data you already have. You don't need to clean up or re-collect anything to get started. We can monitor using the account information you already hold.
- Your data stays secure. When the industry's main communication channel is dealing with a cybersecurity incident, security isn't a side note. BankruptcyWatch is SOC 2 Type II certified, so the portfolio data you share with us is protected by independently audited controls.
How we can help right now
We can have you up and running within 24 hours, but we move at your pace.
Signatures, security review, and testing take as long as they take on your side. To speed up procurement, our Trust Center keeps all of our due diligence documents in one place. Need to move fast because of the outage? Tell us, and we'll match it.
