Breach Awareness – Cyber Attack on Third-Party Digital Records Vendor Impacts Local Governments Across Nation

StateScoop has written an article discussing the impacts of a cyberattack against Cott Systems, a nationwide digital records management vendor reportedly utilized by approximately 400 local governments across 21 states. On December 26th, the company alerted customers that they had detected “unusual activity” on internal servers and were taking their network offline. Cott Systems has not yet provided a recovery timeline for its customers, but states that no customer data appears to be affected. County clerks in North Carolina, Connecticut, Mississippi, Louisiana, and New York have acknowledged knock-on effects from the attack, including an inability to issue new marriage licenses and real-state transactions as well as reverting to the slower process of manual record updates. Read more at StateScoop here.