Operations returning to normal in Wayne County after cyber incident, officials say

(CBS DETROIT) – The Wayne County Sheriff’s Office says systems will be fully functional starting Wednesday after a cyber attack hit the county government systems on Oct. 2.
“A lot of us could have notified the public in a more timely manner,” Sheriff Raphael Washington told media on Tuesday. “But we were busy getting those systems back online.”
Washington went on to say that the government was forced to pivot from a digital to an analog world to create workarounds.
While the systems were down for nearly two weeks, jails were unable to transport inmates to court, bonds were not immediately able to be posted, and family members were not able to properly interact with inmates.
“All of this stuff was being done manually by all of the people you see up here,” said Wayne County Sheriff’s Office Chief Robert Dunlap. “We were going through and doing a physical face-to-face head count of every person in the jail.”
Officials could not offer details into who orchestrated the attack or their motives, as the investigation is still ongoing. They also couldn’t elaborate on which systems were targeted within the Wayne County government either.
While they said they still need to build new systems from the ground up, they’re confident that they’ve created safeguards to prevent future attacks until that can be done.
“There have been substantial changes in our environment since this incident happened,” said Sgt. Britton Foreman. “I’m not getting into that for security purposes, but there have been many, many changes.”
“Now we’re in the position that those who are supposed to be in court tomorrow will be in court tomorrow,” Washington said. “Because we’ve figured out how to get that done even while the system is being prepared and put back online.”
The sheriff’s office recommends that people who have official business within their office arrive early to give themselves plenty of time, just in case there is a backlog due to the outages.