‘Cybersecurity attack’ continues to cause outages in Macon-Bibb network after over a month

More than a month after its computer systems were downed in a cyber attack Macon-Bibb County continues to grapple with the effects on its network. 

A county spokesperson said 90% of their front-facing websites were back online shortly after the breach, but several online municipal resources remain inaccessible.

County commissioners approved a new $132,400 contract with Kroll Associates to monitor for suspicious activity within the network at their most recent meeting. Brief discussion took place regarding what county attorney Duke Groover described as a “cybersecurity attack,” but officials remained tight lipped. 

“We’ve had a cybersecurity attack, and part of what they look for is vulnerability, including public statements about the state of our system,” Groover said in response to a question from commissioner Virgil Watkins about the status of the computer systems.. 

The county’s cyber insurance broker recommended that they contract with a company to help shore up their network in the immediate aftermath of the attack, county manager Keith Moffett said. The name of that company hasn’t been disclosed, but their contract with them expired after around 45 days, according to Moffett. 

The county’s contract with Kroll is taking a “proactive” monitoring approach as opposed to the current “reactive” system in place with Cisco, meaning that the new system will ideally prevent a cyberattack instead of catching it when it happens.

According to Watkins, the county has no IT director and has an interim serving due to “HR incidents.” Moffett said he would post the openings online “right away.”

What is still being impacted?

The Bibb County Sheriff’s Office doesn’t have access to any reports from June 2023 to mid-May 2024, leaving the office at a “stand-still.”

“Again, we do not have a timeframe of how long this process will take, so please bear with us and we appreciate your patience,” a sheriff’s office spokesperson wrote in reply to a records request.

According to the Solicitor-General’s office, court proceedings have not been postponed due to the inaccessibility of records. 

“We never stopped going,” Bibb County Solicitor-General Rebecca Grist said. “We just had to do a lot of things manually that we normally would have done electronically.”

Officials at last week’s county commission meeting confirmed that all employees have been issued paychecks since the attack. Outstanding payments to vendors are being prioritized and “will be taken care of in due time,” Mayor Lester Miller said.

The county elections were also impacted. When the Secretary of State Elections Division learned about the attack, it cut off Macon-Bibb’s access to the Georgia Registered Voter Information System (GARViS) until the county purchased new laptops and provided the IP addresses to the state. 

Election equipment, however, is never connected to the internet, elections spokesperson Mike Hassinger said. 

“We monitored all their traffic in transmitting data to us,” Hassinger said. “We have all the audit logs, and we still have paper ballots that we can refer to should anyone question the integrity of Macon-Bibb’s Primary election.”