Washington County government still operating offline after security breach

WASHINGTON COUNTY, Pa. — Thursday was day two of Washington County working with their computer systems completely shut down.

County commissioners are praising everyone for working the old-fashioned way, which hasn’t been easy.

>> Washington County government targeted by hackers

Many of the courthouse workers want to know when they’ll have computer access again and if and when they’ll get paid.

County leaders got an update from Homeland Security at 9 p.m. Wednesday discussing measures they’ll need to take to get computers up and running.

County commissioner Nick Sherman tells Channel 11 they still don’t know the extent of the security breach or any timeline on when they’ll be back up and running. He said a major concern that’s a priority right now is actually payroll.

“We have a Plan A and B for payroll,” Sherman explained. “Hopefully this gets operating sooner rather than later. Working with a consultant want to make sure that’s a priority, if not we work with banks and can issue paper checks to employees where we call them down to treasures office department by department like we used to do for many years.”

Channel 11′s Cara Sapida asked if they had further clarification on what this security breach is and if this is a ransomware attack like the city of Washington experienced a few years ago. Sherman said they are still waiting for answers and still calling it a cyber security incident.

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