Update, October 27: The BNC is back online. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts announced that BNC operations would resume October 26, 2026, starting with backlogged files in chronological order. Backlogged notices are now arriving, many of them late, and most court orders issued during the outage remain in effect. For the restoration schedule and a summary of every district order, see our district-by-district guide.

From October 9 to October 26, 2026, a cybersecurity incident at BAE Systems, the contractor that runs the Bankruptcy Noticing Center (BNC), halted the production and delivery of paper and electronic bankruptcy notices nationwide. If your team relies on BNC mail or Electronic Bankruptcy Noticing (EBN) to learn about new filings, you may have gone more than two weeks without them.

The BNC is back, but the gap it left isn’t closed. Deadlines didn’t stop when the notices did, and the backlog now arriving carries deadlines that are already running. Below is what happened, what it means for creditors and servicers, and what you can do about it today, whether or not you work with us.

The BNC outage at a glance

• What: The Bankruptcy Noticing Center stopped producing and sending all paper and electronic (EBN) bankruptcy notices nationwide.
• When: October 9 to October 26, 2026. Some courts say the disruption began as early as October 6.
• Why: A cybersecurity incident at BAE Systems, the contractor that operates the BNC.
• Status: Restored October 26. The backlog is being processed in date order, and paper notices generated since October 13 carry an “IMPORTANT NOTICE” that they may be late.
• Deadlines: Not automatically extended. A nationwide Bankruptcy Rules emergency under Rule 9038 runs through January 7, 2027, and gives courts room to grant relief, but relief still has to be ordered.
• Court orders: At least 22 districts issued outage orders, and most remain in effect until further order.

2 ways BankruptcyWatch can help

1. Get free daily BK lists through Friday, October 30. We’ll send you a free daily list of every bankruptcy filing since the outage began. It’s all public PACER data and requires no borrower information from you. Sign up here
2. Bypass the BNC for good. Our monitoring pulls straight from the courts, so you never have to rely on the BNC again. Sign up and get a free full-portfolio scrub to find any accounts that filed during the outage. Start your free scrub

Why did the Bankruptcy Noticing Center go down?

The BNC went 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 BNC operations resumed on October 26.

The BNC produces and delivers court notices for every bankruptcy court: notices of commencement and 341 meetings, orders, discharges, and dismissals. During the outage, all of it was 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 kept working. CM/ECF and PACER were up, cases were being filed and opened, and registered e-filers still received Notices of Electronic Filing. The District of Alaska showed how far the ripple went: its clerk mailed orders by hand to non-electronic parties, and 341 meetings for cases filed on or after October 9 weren’t set until the BNC returned.

What we don't know yet: The nature of the incident and whether any data was accessed still haven’t been disclosed.

How does the BNC outage affect creditors?

If BNC notices are how you learn about bankruptcies, every filing during the outage is a potential blind spot. Here is where that exposure shows up.

• You may not know who filed. Cases kept opening every day of the outage, but the notices that would have told you about them didn’t go out. Accounts that filed during those two weeks may 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. Most extensions must be requested case by case. The Rule 9038 emergency gives courts more room to grant relief through January 7, 2027, but it doesn’t extend anything on its own.
• Service gaps. With NCRS offline, pleadings served during the outage may not have reached the preferred address you registered. Courts warn the substitute creditor list in CM/ECF may omit addresses registered through EBN or NCRS.
• The backlog is here. The BNC is working through backlogged notices day by day while sending new ones at the same time. Expect two and a half weeks of notices to arrive in batches, some carrying deadlines that are already running, plus possible duplicates in districts where debtors served notice during the outage.
• A security question mark. Many creditors feed BNC notice files straight into their core systems. That channel’s operator had a cybersecurity incident, and nothing public says how long it was underway or what it touched. There is no confirmed data breach, but the courts’ advice still applies: verify what you receive against the docket.
  

What should creditors do now?

Whatever tools you use, these steps reduce your exposure as the BNC works through its backlog.

1. Treat October 6 as your gap date. Several court orders reach back to cases filed on or after October 6, 7 or 8. Assume any account could have filed since then and that you weren’t told.
2. 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.
3. Scrub your highest-risk accounts first. Prioritize accounts with active collection, scheduled payment pulls, pending repossession or litigation, and recent delinquency.
4. Pause or review automated actions. Consider holding automated collection steps on flagged accounts until you have confirmed their bankruptcy status.
5. 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.
6. Work the backlog. Reconcile incoming BNC notices against what you’ve already found, check each notice’s deadline against the docket, and watch for duplicates.
7. Check each court’s outage order. Most remain in effect, and some make creditors serve their own motions and orders. See our district-by-district guide.

The catch: checking dockets manually through PACER is fee-based and doesn’t scale for large portfolios. Automated monitoring solves that problem.

How to monitor bankruptcies without the BNC

BankruptcyWatch connects directly to the federal court system, so our monitoring never depends on the BNC. While BNC notices stopped from October 9 to 26, our clients continued to receive bankruptcy alerts.

• 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. After the industry’s main communication channel went through 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 backlog? Tell us, and we'll match it.

This article is general information, not legal advice. Talk with your counsel about your specific obligations.

Frequently asked questions about the BNC outage

Is the Bankruptcy Noticing Center down? Not anymore. The BNC was down nationwide from October 9 to October 26, 2026, when operations resumed. Backlogged notices are being processed in date order.

Why did the BNC go down? BAE Systems, which operates the BNC for the federal judiciary, experienced a cybersecurity incident. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts confirmed it on October 15, 2026.

Were PACER and CM/ECF down during the outage? No. PACER and CM/ECF stayed up throughout the outage, and courts kept accepting filings and opening new cases.

Are bankruptcy deadlines extended because of the BNC outage? Not automatically. A nationwide Bankruptcy Rules emergency under Rule 9038 runs through January 7, 2027, and lets courts extend rule-based deadlines, but relief has to be ordered, often case by case.

Will I still receive the notices I missed? Yes. The BNC is processing the backlog by date, and paper notices generated since October 13 carry a message saying they may have been sent later than intended. Check deadlines against the docket, since some may already be running.

Does the automatic stay apply if I never received a bankruptcy notice? Yes. The automatic stay takes effect when the case is filed, regardless of whether the creditor was notified.

How can I find out if a customer filed bankruptcy during the BNC outage? Search the court record directly through PACER, or use a bankruptcy monitoring service like BankruptcyWatch that connects to the courts rather than relying on BNC notices.

Do court outage orders still apply now that the BNC is back? In most districts, yes. At least 22 districts issued outage orders, and most remain in effect until further order. Some make creditors serve their own motions and orders. See our district-by-district guide for each court’s rules.