WA state’s court system suffered two-week data outage. Here’s where things stand now

A statewide outage that affected Washington state courts’ network for two weeks ended Monday.

“The Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) is in the process of bringing up systems on the Washington Courts network, following successful work and testing throughout the weekend,” the office said in a news release.

The outage began after the AOC detected unauthorized activity on the Washington Courts network. Action was taken to secure critical systems. The outage included all Judicial Information Systems, the Washington Courts websites and associated services, The News Tribune previously reported.

Monday’s release said that the unauthorized activity has been eliminated, with a forensic analysis ongoing.

“We can confirm that there was no detected breach of data and the event did not result in ransomware, due to quick action taken to isolate and secure the network. A post-event release will follow the next meeting of the state’s Judicial Information System Committee in December as we learn more,” the release said.

To help minimize anticipated disruptions, the Blake Refund Bureau, the Appellate Court Document Portal and e-filing for appellate courts will continue to be offline until the network is stable, the release said.

Some services offered by the Pierce County Superior Court Clerk’s Office were affected by the outage. Electronic court record searches and balance information for judgments and fines owed were unavailable for a time, the office said in a previous news release.

The statewide outage also affected Pierce County’s district and municipal courts. Only essential District court functions were available because they were operating with limited services, The News Tribune reported.

The outage has since been resolved, district court administrator Misty Robison told The News Tribune in an email.

Robison said the court is advising members of the public to expect longer than average wait times as they work on getting through their backlog, while also assisting customers.

“We appreciate their understanding and cooperation,” she said.

Thurston County Superior and District courts were both impacted by the Administrative Office of the Courts network outage.

Superior Court had to instruct parties to prepare paper bench copies of all materials for proceedings. New case filings and filling documents for existing cases had to be handled in person at the Thurston County Clerk’s Office.