The system at the Sheriff’s Office in Jacksonville, Florida became a target of ‘suspicious activities’ on Friday. Following the ‘citywide internet outages’, filing arrest reports was hindered and the internal systems were shut down on Sunday. The systems were later restored to their full capacity.
Upon detection of suspicious activities in the systems at the Sheriff’s office from an external server, the authorities alerted staff. As the systems at the office were already fully protected by the cyber detection software installed last year, the City staff could readily curb the issue and possible threat.
They took further actions and disabled the account that was causing the episode leading to the system outage. Due to the incident, the police officials could not make arrest reports, and the process was interrupted until Sunday.
The City and Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office have taken precautionary measures to prevent further delays in their work. The cybersecurity team also completed a thorough scan of the systems at the Sheriff’s Office at Jacksonville.
In an official statement, the FBI Jacksonville Cyber Task Force said, “The FBI Jacksonville Task Force has been providing assistance to the City of Jacksonville related to potentially suspicious activity on its system, and our technically trained cyber experts will continue to share any new information available to assist them in making informed decisions.”
The City denied making any statements initially, however, after the matter was resolved and thoroughly investigated, comments from the authorities were made. The media also reported suspicions about a possible ‘ransomware’ attack on the Sheriff’s office at Jacksonville. To clarify this, Jacksonville Chief Administrative Officer Brian Hughes said in a statement, “Neither the City of Jacksonville or the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office are the subject of a ransomware attack”.
Adding that the situation is contained, Hughes said that the City and JSO have taken precautionary measures to limit access till the time the cyber security team is thoroughly investigating the issue.
