Unfortunately, we did not receive good news from COTT Systems last night. I will share some excerpts of their message. If you prefer to skip the details, the quick summary is the fact that our computer system remains unavailable with no immediate timeline for restoration. This is very discouraging news for our office. We realize this brings the real estate market to a standstill in Lawrence County as well as 400 offices across the United States.

“Customer Update – January 8, 2023

Dear Valued Customer:

Our IT team and technical cyber specialists worked over the weekend to try to bring our systems back to full functionality. However, recovering from the cyber-attack is still dominating our systems. The cyber recovery phase requires several steps. To complete those steps, we continue to need much more space than we normally use for operations.

With the worldwide hardware shortage, even emergency orders are taking too long. Over the weekend we had: one promised order never appeared, one order was found to be not compatible, one small order finally arrived today that has allowed us to begin to work on some of the necessary basic functions. On Tuesday, January 10, we expect a substantial shipment to arrive. Once it arrives, we estimate that we will need 24-48 hours to work with our technical experts to bring the system up then verify and validate all data.

Last week, we hurried to give all customers the option of working again. However, the combination of everyone going on-line at once, along with our cyber recovery steps continuing to run, overloaded our system and it went into “protection mode.” We cannot let that happen again.

As we become fully functional, we will methodically bring customers back on line. Unfortunately, we must take this day-by-day and the timeline cannot be established yet tonight. “

End of excerpts.

Please note my staff, will remain in the office to answer phone calls and accept documents, which will be held safely until our system is operational again.

My sincerest apologies,

Sharon Gossett Hager

Lawrence County Ohio Recorder