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FULTON COUNTY, Ga. — Fulton County announced a “cybersecurity incident” caused a widespread government system outage.
During a press conference on Monday afternoon, commission chairman Robb Pitts said that the Fulton County government learned about the outage over the weekend.
“This incident has been reported to law enforcement and is under active investigation,” Pitts said. “We do want our citizens to be aware that a number of our primary technology platforms are affected by this incident. “
He also said the issue was reported to law enforcement and is in the early stages of an investigation.
A number of the government’s primary platforms are affected. Three examples include their phone system, court system and tax system. There is no specific time frame for when these systems will be restored.
A cybersecurity expert told 11Alive these situations could take “weeks to months” to resolve.
“We at Fulton County take cybersecurity seriously, and we place a high priority on the protection of sensitive information — that’s personal, sensitive information,” Pitts said. “At this time, we are not aware of any transfer of sensitive information about citizens or employees.”
Pitts said they will continue to look carefully at this issue and that the public will be informed once additional information becomes available.
Below is a press conference with Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts about this outage.
FBI Atlanta said the agency is aware of the issue and has been in contact with Fulton County IT.
“While we cannot comment on any specific incidents, the FBI routinely advises the public and private sectors about cyber threats in order to help them guard against the actions of cybercriminals. We work with our interagency partners to identify, pursue and defeat all those who partake in cybercrime,” a spokesperson with FBI Atlanta said.
A county release said earlier Monday that operations were “experiencing an unexpected IT outage currently affecting multiple systems.”
Ryan Marosy showed up at the Fulton County Government Center on Monday morning to appeal his property taxes. He didn’t make it very far.
“I had no idea they were closed. I didn’t get an email or anything,” he said. “I took time off of work, could’ve been doing other stuff and now I didn’t get that chance.”
Caroline Smith ran into the same problems while trying to change her car title.
“The DMV was completely empty, and I asked, and they said they told everybody to go home, so they did. I don’t blame them,” she said. “I would love to have a transfer done this week, so that’s pretty inconvenient. This was my day off to do it, so hopefully, I can do it again another day this week.”
The county said its Department of Information Technology is working to address the issue.
Specific impacts include the county’s VOIP phone systems, with the release stating that “most offices will be unable to accept phone calls.”
“To reach Fulton County Customer Service, contact customerservice@fultoncountyga.gov,” the release said.
The Fulton County Tax Commissioner’s Downtown Atlanta office was closed Monday amid the issue, and other offices “will be limited to processing motor vehicle renewals via kiosk and assisting customers with general questions.” The county said some transactions are limited by the outage, including “transactions using the property tax transactions and the justice system.” That includes firearms and marriage licenses.
“Customers may also purchase motor vehicle renewals through kiosks at certain retail locations,” the county release said.
Public computers at county libraries are also temporarily unavailable, though other library systems remain available.
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