Henry County government is still in the process of coming back online after what county officials have billed a “cyber incident” that wreaked havoc on its technological systems two weeks ago.
Assistant county manager Brad Johnson told the Times Monday that the FBI is investigating the matter, and in the meantime county staff members have been examining each of the county’s 2,000 or so computers.
The county’s website is ready to go back online but “we haven’t flipped the switched yet,” Johnson said Monday afternoon.
Email systems have also been down, but that was expected to be rectified within a day or so. The Board of Commissioners had already approved a contract that would allow all departments to change to an Office 365 email system and it was scheduled to take effect in September, but county officials have worked in the past few days to take the necessary licensing procedures to adopt that system as early as yesterday.
Johnson said the initial hope was for everything to be back up and running a week after the incident, but the necessary work simply cannot be done in that amount of time. He gave no specific timetable for the completion of the cyber recovery.
According to various media reports, at least a dozen municipalities in 2019 have fallen victim to incidents similar to this one.
Johnson praised the work of county staff in keeping the regular business of citizens moving, such as issuing permits and other day-to-day activities.
The shutdown took place July 17 at about 3 a.m. when an employee noticed suspicious activity that officials feared could compromise the personal information of thousands of county residents. The proactive move was made to protect such data as court records, police records and property tax records.