Kansas Courts Go “Old School” After Cyberattack

Jefferson County's IT (Information Technology) Department has made security a top priority in order to prevent exactly what has happened across the state line, in Kansas, where most of Kansas' court computer systems have been down all week as the result of what officials are calling a “security incident.”The problem was first discovered on Thursday, October 12, 2023. The Kansas Supreme Court issued an administrative order that same day. The order provides that the appellate court clerk's office and all district court clerk's offices except Johnson County are inaccessible because the electronic filing systems in those courts are unavailable, as is electronic service and the case management system. The system for making payments with a credit card, electronic check, or other electronic method is also unavailable.Kansas courts remain open but are operating with paper files and records.The cause of the outage has not been officially released yet. However, Sedgwick County, Kansas, Judge Philip Journey told KAKE Television News that the outage was the result of a ransomware attack. That has not been confirmed by the Kansas Supreme Court.One of the most crippling forms of cyberattack is called ransomware. Malware (malicious software) is a computer file or code that can infect a computer system and be used to steal, destroy or alter data. Ransomware is malware that employs encryption to hold computer information for ransom. Once in the system, critical data, applications and files are no longer accessible by the legitimate user. It is called ransomware because a ransom is then demanded by the perpetrators to release the infected systems.Given the proximity of Jefferson and Gage Counties to Kansas, some locals with legal business in Kanaas may find themselves impacted by the outage.Upon hearing about the incident, Jefferson County Commissioner Mark Schoenrock said at this week's commissioners meeting, “You know, we beat that cybersecurity drum pretty regularly.”Schoenrock added, “This is so important. You get taken down, your whole operation is totally affected.”Last year, Schoenrock attended an all-day cybersecurity seminar in Lincoln, presented by the Nebraska Intergovernmental Risk Management Association (NIRMA). Schoenrock gave a report to his fellow commissioners at that time, “We reviewed a number of different hardware and software tools to help us fight off cybersecurity threats, of which they are tremendously increasing. And we learned last week that one of the prime targets is county government for a number of different reasons. One of the prime targets of these people that are out there trying to do bad things.”Various court systems have also been regularly targeted. Texas courts were hit by a ransomware attack in 2020 and Wisconsin’s court system was brought down by hackers in 2021. The International Criminal Court reported a “cybersecurity incident” in September of this year.It is unknown at this time if Kansas court system suffered a data breach. As of press time, the system remains down.

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