The county’s information technology services department detected the hacker on county servers Friday and began taking systems offline to conduct maintenance assess their security.
County offices and courthouses never closed, but several online systems remained down through Wednesday, including the county headquarters’ Wi-Fi, online filing systems for all of the county’s courthouses and the Cobb County Jail database.
Commissioners Keli Gambrill and JoAnn Birrell said Thursday that they had full access to their email and necessary systems.
“I was at my office earlier today and everything was fine,” Birrell wrote in a text to the MDJ.
Gambrill said she got the all-clear from IT in a Wednesday email.
“My understanding is everything (is) back ... I am getting emails and corresponding as before,” she said.
Cobb Chairwoman Lisa Cupid and Cobb County Communications Director Ross Cavitt held a press conference on the server breach Wednesday, where they stated officials were still investigating whether or not any sensitive citizen data had been compromised.
The county did not confirm if any resident data was leaked when asked by the MDJ Thursday.
Cupid stated Wednesday she did not know how long the hacker was on the county’s server or where they gained access from. Cavitt said Wednesday that law enforcement was not involved in the investigation and did not confirm if the breach was a ransomware attack or not.
“As far as it being a ransomware attack,” Cavitt said, “we’re in a position where once the servers are brought back online, all the services should be available to residents, so we don’t expect any sort of disruption in any services or data that existed prior to this incident.”
Cavitt said if the county identifies any sensitive information was leaked, affected residents and the public would be promptly notified.
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