A majority of Fayette County employees now have access to their emails and share files after losing them for weeks following a Malware infiltration of the county computer system on June 23.
Ransonware is the type of Malware that was detected. Ransomware is essentially a malicious software that is designed to keep users from accessing their electronic data unless a sum of money or a “ransom” is paid.
There are only a couple departments left without email, according to county officials.
Fayette County Commissioner Dan Dean said, “It’s not that they’re unimportant entities but they are down on the list of the ones who would get our attention first. They’re close to getting emails back too.”
The situation is still under investigation and more details will be released at a later date.
Dean said, “On the county side, there is no information that has been determined lost from anybody. So, we still haven’t lost any of the public information or any employee information that we know of.”
This information is still being checked into during the investigation which Dean explained, “The deeper the check, the better it looks.”
Fayette County Public Health personnel are investigating their department on their own.
”They’re connected to our network and they had a server that was encrypted as well,” said Dean.
Dean explained, “We’ve purchased quite a bit of equipment.” This equipment is meant for increasing security of the network that will make it more “cumbersome” for employees to gain access, but will add “a lot more protection.”
Right now the IT department is working on the Fayette County Prosecutor’s Office.
“It’s a slow process. It tries people’s patience so we hope everybody is understanding of that. They’re working as hard, as fast and as best as they can,” said Dean.
Any questions regarding the infiltration of the county network 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.
