PIERCE COUNTY 5/16/2025 – On April 21, Pierce County Library System Info Expertise workers shut down all laptop community methods in an abundance of warning after they detected uncommon and doubtlessly malicious exercise. The workers instantly engaged cyber safety consultants, together with the Multistate Info Sharing and Evaluation Heart (MS-ISAC), a authorities cybersecurity group, to offer assist by the preliminary investigation.
As of Might 12, the Pierce County Library System confirms that the library was the goal of a cybersecurity occasion, the place an out of doors entity gained unauthorized entry to the PCLS community. The preliminary methods investigation took about three weeks and included work with over a thousand particular person methods, servers, software program, and databases. This thorough course of was essential to scan for malware, establish attainable information removing, and retrace the unauthorized particular person’s steps to grasp the extent of the breach.
The investigation confirmed that some library information was taken. The main points of the data accessed stay unknown presently and are nonetheless underneath investigation. People whose personally identifiable data was impacted might be notified accordingly. As a observe, the library minimizes the quantity of non-public data collected from library customers.
The library system mentioned in a press release, “This cybersecurity occasion is a legal act, and now we have notified the suitable regulation enforcement businesses. We proceed to coordinate with cybersecurity professionals as we transfer into the following stage of response to the incident. The library stays dedicated to enhancing safety methods and defending personally identifiable data.
“We recognize your endurance as our workers work diligently to offer uninterrupted service regardless of this outage. Vital progress has been made within the safe restoration of our methods, and full restoration is nearby. Please proceed to examine our website for normal updates on service outages and restoration.
“Thanks to your endurance and understanding throughout this difficult time. Your assist is invaluable to us.”