December 15, 2023 at 12:48PM
Kansas court system recently resumed its case management computer system after a foreign cyberattack forced a two-month shutdown. District courts in 28 counties will be back online by Monday, with public document access restored later. Despite undisclosed hacker demands, state branches are working on recovery while enhancing cybersecurity measures.
Key Takeaways from Meeting Notes:
1. The court system in Kansas has been the victim of a foreign cyberattack, resulting in the shutdown of its computer system for managing cases and public access to documents and other systems.
2. The case management systems for district courts in 28 of the state’s 105 counties are expected to be back online by Monday, with others following by the end of the week. Public online access to documents will be restored after that.
3. Systems for applying for marriage licenses online and filing electronic orders for protection have also been restored.
4. The Kansas Supreme Court revealed that the cyberattack involved data theft and threats to post it on a dark website, but they have not disclosed the hackers’ demands, whether any ransom was paid, or the cost of restoring the systems.
5. The outage affected the courts in 104 counties, except for Johnson County, which has its own systems and is not scheduled to join the state’s systems until next year.
6. Cybersecurity experts believe the attack had the hallmarks of a ransomware attack, despite the initial description as a “security incident” by the judicial branch.
7. Due to the long outage, courts in affected counties have had to revert to paper filing, causing delays in electronically logging all filings since the shutdown.
8. The risk assessment of the state’s court system issued in February 2022 is kept permanently confidential under state law, as is one issued in June 2020.
9. Recent audits of other state agencies have identified cybersecurity weaknesses, indicating broader vulnerabilities in the state’s IT security.
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