Key systems in Fulton County, Georgia are offline after a “cyber incident” hit government systems last week. While the County will do its best to continue operations as normal, phone lines, court systems, property records, etc all went down. The county has not yet confirmed details of the cyber incident, such as which group may be behind it or the motive behind the attack. There was no data breach on Tuesday, according to Fulton County Board of Commissioners Chairman Robb Pitts.
Fulton County made headlines in August as the location chosen by prosecutors to file election interference charges against former President Donald Trump. But don’t worry, officials assured the public that the case was not affected by the attack. “All election related materials are stored on a separate, highly secure system that has not been hacked and is designed to make any unauthorized access extremely difficult, if not impossible.” he said Fulton County District Attorney Fanny Willis.
However, Fulton County’s election systems did not appear to be the target of the attack. The Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections released a statement saying, “There is no indication that this incident is related to the election process.” This was reported by Fulton County. “Out of an abundance of caution, Fulton County and the (Georgia) Secretary of State’s respective technology systems have been isolated from each other as part of the response effort.”
The impact of the attack so far has ranged widely, from delays in obtaining marriage licenses to disruption of court hearings. On Wednesday, a miscommunication during a blackout even got a murder suspect out of jail. The search for the officers continues omitted by mistake While being transferred between Clayton County and Fulton County for suspect hearing.
The county has not released information on when it expects systems to be fully restored, but is working with law enforcement on restoration efforts. Meanwhile, Fulton County has shut down, even as voters find it difficult to access certain public services list of contact information for affected departments. Fulton County also exempted full list of affected systems.
While government IT outages were occurring, a local student also hacked Fulton County Schools’ systems. according to StateScoop On Friday. The school system is still determining whether any personal data was breached, but most services are back online by Monday.
