Prince George’s County government has been affected by a national ransomware attack on Ultimate Kronos Group, a massive human resources company that serves as the timekeeping vendor for the county, officials said Tuesday.
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The announcement from County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks (D) comes as Maryland’s health department is trying to address a separate cyberattack that has prevented the department from releasing coronavirus case rates for 10 days, and the information technology arm of Virginia’s General Assembly is also dealing with its own ransomware cyberattack that has shut down several systems, including the one used to file new legislation.
In a statement, Ultimate Kronos Group Executive Vice President Bob Hughes said the attack, which was first discovered Saturday, affected users of Kronos Private Cloud. He said that it could take “up to several weeks” to restore the system.
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“We are working with leading cyber security experts to assess and resolve the situation, and have notified the authorities,” Hughes said. “The investigation remains ongoing, as we work to determine the nature and scope of the incident.”
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Alsobrooks said that the ransomware does not impact the county government’s payroll but does impact its timekeeping function. She said that to ensure employees are paid on time, staff and supervisors will be required to keep time both offline in the vendor system and manually.
“The Prince George’s County Office of Information Technology, Office of Human Resources Management, Office of Finance, Office of Law and County government leadership have been working diligently to understand the scope of this ransomware attack, and how it affects our government,” said Alsobrooks. “We will continue to seek answers from the vendor and put in place temporary procedures while Kronos works through this matter.”