Courthouse impacted by data breech
Four offices operating without access to computer information
A data breech at a third-party IT vendor is impacting operations at the St. Francis County Courthouse to the point that four offices are unable to access information in the computer systems to serve the public.
SFC Assessor Craig Jones said he was notified Saturday evening that the equipment at Apprentice Information Systems, Inc., the county’s vendor, had possibly been compromised.
Jones said he went to the courthouse and shut down the county’s server immediately after being notified of the problem, which in addition to his office is also impacting operations for the collector’s office, treasurer and county clerk.
According to Jones, 73 counties in the state use the technology service based in Rogers.
“We were actually pretty quick in getting our server shut down,” said Jones, adding that the move may have saved some of the county’s information from being impacted. “The system was hacked by a foreign entity and could be down for up to two weeks,” he added.
Jones said even though the office staffs are limited in what they can process without computers, all of the offices in the courthouse remain open. He said workers are doing what they can on paper, adding that his office has worked out a system to allow people to purchase tags for their vehicles.
“You just can’t pay taxes right now. It’s impossible to pay them while this system is down,” he said. “If you’re going to renew your tags, take your papers to the revenue office and they can look at the paper and get you your tags. It may not be a tax receipt on it, but they will override it and let you go.”
Jones said a lot of local residents wait to pay their taxes until it’s time to register their vehicles.
“Most people pay when they get their tags anyway, so when they come in next year, they will have to pay up then for what they haven’t paid,” he said.
The process will be different for those who have new vehicles.
“Come to our office. We have laptops where we can go online to look at the data. We can take the information about the vehicle and send them to get their tags,” said Jones. “If you’re new and moving in here from another place, just wait until after Thanksgiving.”
Jones said all of the information gathered while the computer systems are down will be entered once it is back up and running so that all the county’s information will be current.
According to Jones, county officials plan to meet later this week to address issues regarding payroll and payments to vendors.
“We will have to do something about writing checks,” said Jones. “Right now, we can’t do payroll or pay anyone we owe, but there is no rush on that right now.”
“Our constituents are very understanding at this point and understand our systems could be down for two weeks,” he added.
Jones said the majority of the information accessed by the breech is already public records that can be found online.
KAIT in Jonesboro reported Monday that Apprentice issued a statement saying, “Out of an abundance of caution some county government systems have been brought offline to further assess potential threats and investigate potential ongoing security issues.”