Jackson County in state of emergency after ransomware attack

Jackson County, Missouri, is in a state of emergency after a ransomware attack took down some county services on Tuesday.

"Jackson County has confirmed a ransomware attack was responsible for the disruption of several county services today," the Missouri county said.

The Assessment, Collection, and Recorder of Deeds offices at all County locations will likely be closed until the end of the week as the IT department works on restoring tax payment, marriage license, and inmate search systems impacted in the incident.

However, according to a statement published on Tuesday, the Kansas City Board of Elections and Jackson County Board of Elections are not affected by this system outage.

Officials have alerted law enforcement, including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, and are working with external IT security experts to investigate the attack.

Jackson County Executive Frank White, Jr. declared a state of emergency on Tuesday to expedite IT orders, activate emergency workers, and protect against a ransomware attack.

"All county staff are to take whatever steps are necessary to protect resident data, county assets, and continue essential services, thereby mitigating the impact of" the ransomware attack," White said [PDF].

"The County Administrator is directed to evaluate the need for appropriations from the County’s emergency fund and, if necessary, identify
additional financial adjustments to address the fiscal requirements imposed by this emergency."

Residents' financial information not impacted

County officials have also confirmed that the compromised systems did not store residents' financial data. This is because Jackson County uses the Payit payment service provider, which stores all myjacksonCounty account data outside of the county's network.

"In its commitment to protect residents, Jackson County prioritizes the security of sensitive financial information and does not keep any such data on its systems. Instead, these crucial details are securely handled and stored by our trusted partner, Payit," they said in a statement.

"Jackson County works with Payit to offer resident engagement and payment services for property taxes, marriage licenses, and other various payable items," said the service provider.

"The service is hosted completely outside Jackson County systems, and we have confirmed that the myjacksonCounty system has not been impacted by the incident. No customer data in myJacksonCounty has been compromised."

Jackson County is one of 114 counties in Missouri, with a population of approximately 718,000 people living within 616 square miles.

The Missouri county includes most of Kansas City, the largest city in Missouri, and 17 other cities and towns.