Fulton County property owners can pay their taxes online, by phone, or in person following the restoration of services after a cyber attack in January.
Fulton Tax Commissioner Arthur Ferdinand and Commission Chairman Robb Pitts provided an update on recovery from the IT systems outage caused by the ransomware attack. Pitts said the investigation could not be discussed as it is ongoing.
Ferdinand said the public-facing portion of the tax commissioner’s system has been fully restored and is now housed in the cloud for more security.
The Fulton Tax Assessor’s Office records have also been restored and are searchable online, he said.
With these systems and credit card payments also hosted in the cloud, the system is less vulnerable, Ferdinand said. The process to move these systems to the cloud would normally take several months but was completed since the ransomeware incident, Ferdinand said.
“While the recent incident has certainly been challenging for all of us, I’m glad to say that the tax commissioner’s office never closed during this incident,” he said.
In February, more than $50 million in property taxes were processed, Ferdinand said.
Pitts said significant progress has been made in restoring services beyond the property tax system, including the majority of phones, internal systems, payroll, and vendor payment.
Background checks by the Sheriff’s Office and the Fulton County Police have not been affected, but the outages did stop third-party background checks, he said. The county has transitioned to a new record search site that is available on the county clerk’s website, he said.
Read the full article here
