The road to recovery is proving to be a long one for a South Carolina county targeted by cyber attacks last month.
The Georgetown County network was brought down by cybercriminals on January 23, in what the authorities described as a “major infrastructure breach”.
Although the 911 systems and operations at Georgetown County Detention Center were not affected by the attack, the county’s electronic and email systems were disrupted.
Ten days after the attack, cybersecurity experts are still working to recover systems and analyze the full extent of the breach, and county emails have yet to be restored.
County staff devoted overtime over the weekend to ensure that payroll and other essential functions could be completed on time. Authorities said departments such as courts, the treasurer’s office and the auditor’s office will not be online for at least another five days.
“County offices are using a combination of mobile access points and other temporary equipment to continue operations to the greatest extent possible,” the county said in a press release released earlier today.
“The county administration is working on implementing additional measures to provide additional functionality to the departments until the network problems are completely resolved. It is not yet known when a complete resolution can be reached. “
Although investigations into the attack are ongoing, the county said that so far, there has been “no indication that any personal information belonging to employees or taxpayers has been compromised in the cyber attack”.
Members of the public were asked to contact the Georgetown County team by phone until the email problems are resolved.
Georgetown County, home to some 60,000 people, is insured against cyber attacks.
A September 2019 ransomware attack in Jasper County, South Carolina, took weeks to resolve. Speaking in October 2019, county president Tom Johnson said, “Our safeguards and team responded appropriately. Unfortunately, properly means turning everything off.
“So it created a major nuisance and inconvenience and also, to some extent, an expense. But we don’t pass checks on to criminals.”
Georgetown County did not share any details about the type of malware used in the cyber attack.