Chelan County reports progress in restoring systems after May disruption

CHELAN COUNTY — Chelan County officials say they have made significant progress restoring county operations following a systemwide disruption that began May 24, with key services including telephones, employee computers and email now back online.

In a countywide update released June 15, officials said county offices remain open to the public and employees are working to catch up on tasks that were temporarily put on hold during the outage. Several county websites, however, remain unavailable.

The county has been working with its cybersecurity insurance provider and a cybersecurity response team to restore systems. Officials said the disruption did not affect as many systems as initially feared, but that recovery efforts have been deliberately paced to ensure systems are restored safely and securely.

The investigation into the incident remains ongoing.

“We don't freely talk about protections we have in place because that is a security issue, and we don't share the security measures we rely on,” Commissioner Shon Smith said in the update. “What I can say is that we have the same type of protections in place that most of corporate America has — and then some.”

Smith added that local governments, businesses and households alike face increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.

County officials said they will evaluate potential improvements once the investigation is complete.

“As unfortunate as this disruption has been, it has given us an opportunity to document workarounds that will be implemented into our Continuity of Operations Plan and will provide us insights as to system improvements we can make,” Commissioner Kevin Overbay said.

Commissioner Brad Hawkins praised county employees for maintaining services during the outage.

“Responding to the network shutdown has proven to be extremely challenging, but county staff and officials have handled it as best we can under difficult circumstances,” Hawkins said. “I'm grateful that our employees have been able to help us maintain as many services as possible, including critical public safety measures, during our recovery.”

County officials said department-specific updates will continue to be posted through the county's social media at facebook.com/ChelanCounty as restoration work continues.

Andrew Simpson: 509-433-7626 or andrew@ward.media