Suffolk County recovering from cyberattack

HAUPPAUGE, N.Y. - Attorneys are once again handling court cases at Suffolk County's Traffic Agency nearly 12 weeks after a cyberattack that shut down many county services. Up until last week, attorney Michael Nappo hadn't been able to represent his clients and home sales with outstanding title reports were in a holding pattern. 

"It's kind of crazy. It happened and locked the whole county," Nappo said. "Mortgage rates were going up. Everyone was trying to lock it in and now we're getting to it."

County Executive Steve Bellone said the county has for the most part recovered except some services that aren't fully running, including the county website. 

While personal information of hundreds of thousands of people who received traffic tickets might have been compromised, the county overall will be in a stronger position than before, Bellone said. 

"We're going to have a significantly hardened IT infrastructure," Bellone said. "We put into the budget this year a chief information security officer for the first time and now some additional cybersecurity positions."

Upgrades for the future comes as welcome news but many people wonder why they weren't in place all along. 

An investigation is also underway in the Town of Islip after suspicious activity on the computer system was detected late last week. 

"Their first indication was about 5:50 a.m. and our team immediately went into action," Town Supervisor Angie Carpenter said.

Within an hour, the town had all of its computers shut down. At this point, officials are saying it doesn't look like any information has been compromised although they say some may have been lost. 

"Everything is being looked at with a fine-tooth comb," Carpenter said. 

Forensic examinations in both the county and the Town of Islip are still underway to find out exactly what happened and to make sure it doesn't happen again.