BAY COUNTY, MI — Bay County officers are advising residents that their email accounts are at present shut down.
Bay County Executive Jim Barcia on Wednesday, Dec. 22, issued an alert stating that the prior week, officers skilled an IT security incident relating to its email server.
“Upon discovery, we instantly initiated a complete response together with taking our community offline and fascinating impartial IT security and laptop forensic specialists to assist us remediate and examine the incident,” Barcia wrote. “We additionally reported the incident to regulation enforcement and are sharing info with them.”
The county accomplished a digital forensic investigation into its total community, with no threats having been detected exterior of the email system. The system stays shut down because the remediation continues.
However, officers additionally discovered suspicious emails have been despatched to the general public. Barcia suggested those that obtain these seemingly official missives to not open them or click on on any hyperlinks they might include.
“Please use an abundance of warning when you obtain an email from a contact from Bay County as there have been studies of emails that seem to be from the County, however aren’t,” Barcia wrote. “Please pay attention to this sort of ‘spoofing’ of County email accounts/names. Review the email handle fastidiously earlier than opening any email out of your County contact over the approaching weeks.”
Barcia added that though the investigation is ongoing, there isn’t a proof anybody’s confidential info has been misused due to this incident.
Officials will preserve the general public knowledgeable of the remediation course of and when the email system is restored through the county’s Facebook page.
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https://www.mlive.com/information/saginaw-bay-city/2021/12/bay-county-governments-email-system-down-due-to-security-incident.html
