Kansas court systems still offline following unexplained security incident last week

Online systems for Kansas’ state and district court systems are shut down following an unexplained security incident.

Kansans outside Johnson County who need to pay court fees, submit filings or apply for a marriage license must visit their district courthouse in person or deliver documents via mail or fax.

Johnson County’s systems were not impacted by the security incident because the county has not yet finished moving its online records into the statewide system.

Lisa Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Judicial Branch, said court employees are still working to determine the extent of the security breach and what it will take to fix it. She said there is not enough information yet to say whether personal information contained in the court systems was accessed.

Public access to the court systems and internal access to the systems have been offline since Thursday, Taylor said.

As the court works to solve the problem the Kansas Supreme Court has ordered all lower courts to continue work using paper systems.

“This order and other information on our website will guide court users on our operations while our information systems are offline,” Chief Justice Marla Luckert said in a statement. “We continue to serve our communities, but we are using different methods until our systems are restored.”

Justin Fimlaid, CEO of NuHarbor Security, a national cybersecurity firm, said Kansas can learn from recent attacks on other court systems, including a recent attack on a Florida Circuit Court. If the attack was ransomware, Fimlaid said, details will be sparse in the early days of an investigation.

The cyber attack, he said, is likely to result in a cost for repairing infrastructure and shifting operations while the system is locked down.

“The unknown is what data is at risk and that is solely dependent on what systems were actually impacted,” Fimlaid said.

Kansans and attorneys can find more information on how to access the court systems at this webpage set up by the court.

Correction: An earlier version of this story gave the incorrect title for Justin Fimlaid, he is CEO of NuHarbor Security.