County government networks down, system hit by virus over the weekend
The county has shut down much of their computer network after a virus hit the system over the weekend. At this point they’re working to restore functionality by restoring system backups.
After discovering the virus Monday morning, county information technology director La Sonja Holcomb advised County Manager Jamie Mccord to shut down the servers to prevent the virus from spreading to more computers.
They first got the 911 Center back online and are now focusing on getting the Floyd County Superior Court system back up as well as the Floyd County Tax Commissioner’s Office, Mccord said.
From there, they will begin working on other departments.
Some county employees have been able to continue work on their own devices and using backups.
Not all of the Floyd County computers were infected with the virus, but 650 computers are still being scanned off the network to make sure that there aren’t any traces of the virus.
“This is recoverable, it is just labor intensive,” Mccord said. “Multiple terabytes of data have to be reloaded. La Sonja and her team have been working around the clock since Monday.”
One of the things the IT department is most focused on is making sure the computers aren’t at risk for any kind of reinfection.
“The virus can hide and not show up so they’re scanning every single device before we go back live,” Mccord said.
Mccord said they haven’t heard about other local counties getting infected with a virus over the weekend, but said there have been similar cases in the past two years.
Back in June 2019, the county court system along with others on a state system were infected with ransomware and recently got all of their files added to a new case management system. Since there aren’t any jury trials going on, the court clerks have been able to focus on recovering their backups through the software SUSTAIN.
Mccord hopes to have the servers back up by the end of the week or over the weekend.