Monroe County government computer network down, offices closed until July 8
After closing down on Monday and Tuesday due to a computer network server outage, Monroe County government offices look like they could be closed on Wednesday, too.
Offices would not be open on Thursday anyway due to the July 4 holiday.
[Updated on Tuesday 3:53 p.m. July 2, 2024. Via the county’s emergency alert system the following message was sent (emphasis added): “Monroe County Government Offices, including the Court, will be closed Wednesday, through Friday and reopen Monday, July 8. Jail employees and Road deputies are not affected by this closure.”
The headline for this report has been revised to reflect this new information.]
Monroe County’s chief technology officer, Greg Crohn, told The B Square that county staff, with the help of a third-party vendor, are working “diligently around the clock on it, trying to get this rectified as soon as possible.”
[Updated at 3:14 p.m. on Tuesday, July 2, 2024. Monroe County issued a news release on the situation. It concludes, “When we have something available for sharing we will provide that as soon as possible.”]
At 8:04 a.m. on Monday, an announcement went out from Monroe County government in a Facebook post that county government offices would not be open that day. The cause of the closure was chalked up to “unforeseen circumstances” and employees were told the time would coded as “emergency time.”
Corrections officers at the jail, sheriff’s deputies and highway workers were not affected by the shutdown.
Mid-morning on Monday, administrator for the county commissioners, Angie Purdie, responded to a B Square question by texting: “We are experiencing a government-wide server outage. The cause of which is being determined.”
In a 5:41 p.m text message sent out by Monroe County’s alert system another day of closure, for July 2, including the court system. Corrections officers at the jail, sheriff’s deputies and highway workers were still expected to report for work.
On Tuesday morning, The B Square spoke with a corrections officer outside the jail, who indicated that anyone with an order for release from jail would still be released, despite the network outage, because that is a paper-based system. People can also be booked into jail without the computer network, the officer indicated.
But the courts are closed. On Tuesday morning, a woman climbed the steps to the door of the Monroe County justice center at College Avenue and 7th Street, but was frustrated by the locked door. She was there to file for divorce, she said.
Speculation among some indirect government sources has run along the lines of a possible cyber attack involving ransomware. The B Square has not been able to verify that speculation.
In response to a B Square question, Monroe County treasurer Cathy Smith said she has not been asked to transfer any county funds in exchange for release of the county’s computer system or data from the control of bad actors.
A basic ransomware exploit involves an attacker getting access to a victim’s system, encrypting their files, and demanding a ransom for the decryption key. This is often done through socially engineered attacks (phishing emails or phone calls) or exploiting weaknesses in software. If the ransom is not paid, the victim might lose access to their data permanently.
Still, Smith said that based on her duty as county treasurer to keep the county’s funds safe, she had called the county’s bank to shut down any transfers out of any of the county’s accounts. Smith took that step on her own initiative out of an abundance of caution, she said, because she had not yet been told that it was safe to allow payments out of county accounts.
Late morning on Tuesday, The B Square spoke with Greg Crohn, Monroe County’s chief technology, officer who could not confirm or deny any particular cause of the network outage. Crohn said the cause of the county government-wide server shutdown might not be known until Friday.
Crohn said that email service has been restored. He added that some internal systems to the county’s network that aren’t for public facing have also been brought back online.
Crohn told The B Square that he preferred not to name the third-party vendor who has been brought in to help sort out the situation.
One vendor used by Monroe County government for cybersecurity is KnowBe4. In 2020, county commissioners approved a $26,000 contract with KnowBe4.
The city of Bloomington also uses KnowBe4 for cybersecurity, as well as CrowdStrike antivirus software.
According to city of Bloomington IT director Rick Dietz, as of midday on July 2, the city’s networks systems are all currently up and running, with the exception of an outage at the police training center—but that is due to damage from last week’s (June 25) storm.
In 2020, Monroe County commissioners approved a contract with FireEye for cybersecurity in connection with the elections that year.
On Monday, with most other offices shut down, Election Central stayed open until noon, because July 1 at noon was the deadline for people to file petition signatures to qualify to appear on the Nov. 5 ballot.
Joe Davis, who fell just short of the number of signatures required to qualify for the Bloomington mayoral ballot in 2023, told The B Square on Tuesday, that he had not collected enough signatures to appear on the Nov. 5 ballot for an at-large county council seat.
But Davis said he had intended to file the paperwork necessary to be a certified write-in candidate. He had tried to do that on Monday, but by then the office had closed, Davis said.
Davis indicated he had intended to try again to file paperwork as a write-in on Tuesday and would try again Wednesday.
The deadline for filing the paperwork to qualify as a certified write-in is Wednesday, July 3 at noon.
[Updated at 12:17 p.m. on July 3, 2024. Davis left a voice message with The B Square at 11:49 p.m. to report that Election Central was open to accept write-in candidate registrations, and that he was registering as a write-in candidate for at-large Monroe County council.]
If Monroe County government follows the same pattern as for Monday, then late afternoon on Tuesday, an announcement would come through the emergency alert system with information about whether county offices will be open on Wednesday (July 3).
