The agency reported the attack on Wednesday. The disruption was still impacting operations Friday, with email communications out of service, and vehicle inspections in the Portland and Medford metro areas closed through the weekend, Lauren Wirtis, communications manager for Oregon DEQ, said.
“We want to get everything back online as fast as possible, but not so fast, of course, that we could open ourselves up to any risk,” Wirtis said on Friday morning, adding the nature of the attack — malware or a data breach — is not yet known.
The department is, it said in a news release, “continuing to work with Enterprise Information Services and Microsoft’s cybersecurity team to analyze and resolve the cyber issue.”
It’s not yet clear how widespread the cyber attack was, or what specific systems were impacted. However, the agency has said, “Your DEQ Online, DEQ’s environmental data information management system is hosted on a separate server, has not been impacted, and will continue to be operational.”
“The focus has really been on just containing what it was,” Wirtis said, adding that bringing the system back online is happening in parallel with the cyber forensics aspect of the investigation. “That’s one of our main priorities, is getting that back up and running.”
“DEQ’s systems will continue to be down. This includes all email,” the news release said, adding the agency has not been able to receive or send emails and it could be several days before business resumes to its normal pace.
