By JONATHAN ZWEYGARDT
Hays Post
Five months after a cybersecurity attack took down the entire Kansas courts information system, 23rd Judicial District officials in Hays announced this week they are back to normal operations.
According to the Kansas Supreme Court, the Oct. 12, 2023 security attack was a “sophisticated foreign cyberattack that impacted the information systems used by the Kansas judicial branch.”
The attack disrupted access to systems used by the court system statewide and everyday operations in all 104 Kansas counties. The online system was taken offline to avoid any further issues.
That meant court staff had to go back to filing documents on paper. 23rd Judicial District Court Administrator Michael Smith said many of the current employees had never done that before.
“They had to basically learn a new job on how to file stuff without the digital world anymore,” Smith said.
Smith called it a “big learning curve” and praised the district court employees, including District Court Clerk Kalya Acosta, for their work during that time.
“She did an outstanding job of organizing all that and putting together a system to keep it together where we knew what needed to be done and where we were at with everything,” Smith said.
The 23rd Judicial Court offices changed their operating hours and closed early each weekday from Nov. 20 through Monday to deal with the paperwork backlog.
“When we were doing paper form before, we were equipped for it. We had the system in place,” Smith said. “Now, we didn't have anywhere to go with all that paper. We had paper files when I started here, and there was a big file cabinet, and you could put all that stuff into a file, and it was there. We don't have those anymore. So, we were really not equipped to go back to a paper file.”
They were also still scanning and saving the paper copies of the documents that had to be put into the new online system when it came back online.
Smith said they are better off now to handle a similar situation in the future.
“We know how to handle it, (and) we have an organizational system in place to take care of it,” Smith said. “But man, I hope it doesn't.”
“It is so much more work on the clerks to do it in a paper form, and it does make you appreciate, how far we've come in the digital world to make that job easier,” Smith said. “I have a new appreciation for all the technology that we put in place in the last 20 years.”
Smith also said he was extremely pleased with how court employees responded.
“They knew that there was a big, big job ahead, and people are important,” Smith said. "They responded because their job is important. Their work is important to the people of Ellis County.”
He added, “they're just really cognizant of the fact that they're working for Ellis County, and they're trying to get the best services they can for Ellis County.”
The online court system starting coming back online in December and almost every Kansas county was back online at the beginning of the new year.
The Ellis County District Court hours are again 8 a.m. to noon and 1 to 4:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays.