New York City Housing Authority Keeps “City Within a City” Safe and Informed with Everbridge

Everbridge, Inc. (NASDAQ: EVBG), the global leader in critical event management (CEM), today announced that the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), the largest public housing authority in North America, expanded the use of the company’s mass notification platform to reach approximately 550,000 New Yorkers living in 316 public housing developments across NYC’s five boroughs. NYCHA recently expanded the program to include additional residents under Section 8, which allows private landlords to rent apartments to low-income tenants. The Housing Authority also uses the platform to communicate with its 14,000 employees.

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New York City Housing Authority Keeps “City Within a City” Safe and Informed with Everbridge (Graphic: Business Wire)

“NYCHA handles a population roughly the size of Atlanta,” said Rudy Murillo, Director of the Office of Emergency Management for the New York City Housing Authority. “With about half a million residents living in 167,000 apartments, we are a city within a city. The challenge we had was quickly reaching all of those residents in an emergency or if we needed to get important information to them right away. We had a system in place before Everbridge, but it took too long to get a message out, sometimes a few hours. With Everbridge, we got that time down to minutes.”

“Timing is critical,” continued Murillo. “We have a requirement that when there is an interruption of gas or electric service, we have to notify tenants within a certain period. And it may not be an entire building. It may be a few units; it may be one stair hall. With Everbridge, we can target our messaging to a specific population, stair hall, or a certain set of buildings. It’s not all or nothing.”

Another benefit of the platform, according to Murillo, is the ease of sending alerts in the right language to the right people. “We have four required languages – English, Spanish, Chinese, and Russian. In the past, we had to combine all of the languages in one message. Sometimes you had to sit there and listen to all of the messages in every language before hearing the one you understood. Now, with Everbridge, we send out messages only in the language preference specified by the household. It saves a lot of time and eliminates confusion for the residents.”

When COVID-19 broke out, NYCHA was prepared for mass notification. “We were fortunate to have Everbridge on board before COVID hit,” Murillo explained. “We were able to notify residents and employees of potential impacts of the pandemic, or even just let them know to monitor their phones and emails for further information. In the beginning of the pandemic, there were lots of unknowns and question marks. But we were able to put people on alert and informed as NYC figured out specific guidance for us to follow.”

After Hurricane Sandy devastated parts of New York in 2012, the City wanted to make sure it could communicate rapidly and reliably not only with residents, but with employees.

“This is a great tool for senior leadership,” said Murillo. “The Housing Authority has 14,000 employees. Whether it’s our CEO or COO, when they want to send out information to every employee, it’s simpler when they can do it all from one platform with ease.”

Murillo said moving the Housing Authority onto Everbridge was a ‘no-brainer’ since both the City of New York and New York State already use the platform as part of the larger Everbridge Network.

“We are honored to serve the New York City Housing Authority, the largest public housing authority in the country, to help ensure the safety of residents and NYCHA employees,” said Brian Toolan, Vice President of Public Safety at Everbridge. “Everbridge’s long-standing relationship with the state of New York includes powering the statewide emergency notification platform NY-ALERT and the New York City emergency notification platform Notify NYC, as well as airports, hospitals, universities, government agencies and businesses throughout the state. In an emergency, all sectors of the community must come together to work on restoring comfort, safety and resiliency. The Everbridge platform enables a coordinated public-private sector emergency response for municipalities, states and countries around the world.”

More local, state, and national governments across the globe deploy the Everbridge population alerting solutions than any other provider, offering the ability to reach over two billion residents and visitors in more than 200 countries in case of digital threats: such as ransomware, cyberattacks, and IT disruptions; manmade threats: such as geo-political, terrorist attacks, and industrial accidents; and natural disasters: such as floods, severe storms, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and wildfires.

About Everbridge

Everbridge, Inc. (NASDAQ: EVBG) is a global software company that provides enterprise software applications that automate and accelerate organizations’ operational response to critical events in order to Keep People Safe and Organizations Running™. During public safety threats such as active shooter situations, terrorist attacks or severe weather conditions, as well as critical business events including IT outages, cyber-attacks or other incidents such as product recalls or supply-chain interruptions, over 5,800 global customers rely on the Company’s Critical Event Management Platform to quickly and reliably aggregate and assess threat data, locate people at risk and responders able to assist, automate the execution of pre-defined communications processes through the secure delivery to over 100 different communication modalities, and track progress on executing response plans. Everbridge serves 8 of the 10 largest U.S. cities, 9 of the 10 largest U.S.-based investment banks, 47 of the 50 busiest North American airports, 9 of the 10 largest global consulting firms, 8 of the 10 largest global automakers, 9 of the 10 largest U.S.-based health care providers, and 7 of the 10 largest technology companies in the world. Everbridge is based in Boston with additional offices in 25 cities around the globe. For more information visit www.everbridge.com

Cautionary Language Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the “safe harbor” provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including but not limited to, statements regarding the anticipated opportunity and trends for growth in our critical communications and enterprise safety applications and our overall business, our market opportunity, our expectations regarding sales of our products, our goal to maintain market leadership and extend the markets in which we compete for customers, and anticipated impact on financial results. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release and were based on current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections as well as the beliefs and assumptions of management. Words such as “expect,” “anticipate,” “should,” “believe,” “target,” “project,” “goals,” “estimate,” “potential,” “predict,” “may,” “will,” “could,” “intend,” variations of these terms or the negative of these terms and similar expressions are intended to identify these forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which involve factors or circumstances that are beyond our control. Our actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied in forward-looking statements due to a number of factors, including but not limited to: the ability of our products and services to perform as intended and meet our customers’ expectations; our ability to successfully integrate businesses and assets that we may acquire; our ability to attract new customers and retain and increase sales to existing customers; our ability to increase sales of our Mass Notification application and/or ability to increase sales of our other applications; developments in the market for targeted and contextually relevant critical communications or the associated regulatory environment; our estimates of market opportunity and forecasts of market growth may prove to be inaccurate; we have not been profitable on a consistent basis historically and may not achieve or maintain profitability in the future; the lengthy and unpredictable sales cycles for new customers; nature of our business exposes us to inherent liability risks; our ability to attract, integrate and retain qualified personnel; our ability to maintain successful relationships with our channel partners and technology partners; our ability to manage our growth effectively; our ability to respond to competitive pressures; potential liability related to privacy and security of personally identifiable information; our ability to protect our intellectual property rights, and the other risks detailed in our risk factors discussed in filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including but not limited to our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020 filed with the SEC on February 26, 2021. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent our views as of the date of this press release. We undertake no intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.

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