Kansas courts revert to in-person filing after cyber security incident

The law has logged off, at least in one state. Online access to Kansas courts will be shut down for at least two weeks in the wake of a cyber attack.

Courts across the state are filing papers manually for the first time in years after state Supreme Court Chief Justice Marla Luckert temporarily did away with a regulation for lawyers to file electronically.

“We continue to serve our communities, but we are using different methods until our systems are restored,” Luckert wrote in her Oct. 16 order.

Kansas City courts (as in Kansas City, Kansas) operate on their own Johnson County systems separate from the rest of the state, and have been thus far unaffected by the attack.

The attack was first made public on October 12. The next day, the Kansas state Supreme Court issued an order “declaring court clerk offices inaccessible for electronic filings through Sunday, October 15…to give the judicial branch time to examine a security incident that has disrupted access to court systems.”

State courts have remained offline since and are expected to maintain a paper-only approach to filing for the foreseeable future as authorities work to establish the extent of the “unauthorized incursion,” as described by Kansas Judge Phil Journey. Kansas Supreme Court spokesperson Lisa Taylor told reporters on Oct. 17 that the problem had spread.

“It’s not just one system,” Taylor said. “It’s multiple systems that are all interconnected.”

Affected systems include:

• Kansas Courts eFiling
• Kansas Protection Order Portal
• Kansas District Court Public Access Portal
• Appellate Case Inquiry System
• Kansas Attorney Registration
• Kansas online marriage license application
• Central Payment Center
• Kansas eCourt case management system

Ramifications of the breach may affect other systems. The Kansas Department for Children and Families reported on Oct. 17 that it expects to encounter processing delays as a result of the incursion.

Spokesperson Taylor told reporters that she was unable to say definitively whether or not private information had been exposed in the breach.

“We have more questions than answers at this point,” Taylor said.