On Sunday, Fayette County’s third-party cyber-security consultants detected potential Malware activity on the county computer network that has made county employee emails unusable and some data inaccessible.

According to Fayette County Commissioner Dan Dean, the Malware detected was “Ransomware.”

Ransomware is essentially a malicious software that is designed to keep users from accessing their electronic data. There are different types of Ransomware and some are more destructive than others. Regardless of what type it is, in order to regain access to data a sum of money (or ransom) must be paid or the users risk losing that information permanently.

“We have everything backed up, so right now they are going around and trying to build everything up,” said Dean. The county utilizes cloud storage to avoid losing data when situations such as these occur.

There has been no reported corruption or breach of information from the county system. Dean explained, “We also have to do all the forensic stuff to make sure nothing’s been compromised. Right now there is no evidence that it has been.”

Some but not all computers on the county network have been impacted. This means some users are unable to log on. The county email is currently unusable. This means county employees cannot access or return any emails until the situation is resolved.

“It happened late (Sunday),” said Dean. “So we’re just trying to access where we’re at. We have all the right people coming in and we’ll figure it out from there.”

Any questions regarding this matter can be directed to the Fayette County Commissioners’ office from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Monday-Friday. The Fayette County Commissioners’ Office is located at 133 S. Main St., suite 401 in Washington Court House and the phone number is 740-335-0720.

Reach Jennifer Woods at 740-313-0355.