Justice Department slowly gets back on track after suffering cyberattacks

The Ministry of Justice & Correctional Services has indicated that its systems have now been activated after four weeks of inactivity due to a cyberattack. One of the systems that has now been restored is the court recording portal which is used by transcribers to download court proceedings

“Another critical area that has been given high priority is the electronic recording of court proceedings to ensure that courts are able to operate as normal. Most of the recordings are intact and able to sync back to the central repository. Where courts are still experiencing challenges, a special capacity has been deployed to attend to queries on a case-by-case basis. The web portal that is used by transcribers to download court recordings for transcription purposes was successfully restored.” stated a Ministry statement.

Another system that is now active is an administrative system used by courts. A statement by the Ministry indicated the following “considerable progress had been made in restoring the Integrated Case Management System (ICMS), which is an administrative system used at all courts, particularly the Office of the Master of the High Court. Parts of the system are already accessible, such as curatorship and the online portals used for historic searches.”

The Department also noted that it would continue to work on bringing back the functionality of other systems in the next few days. These will include systems that manage trusts, deceased estates and insolvencies. In relation to personal information, the Department indicated that it had strengthened its security systems to protect sensitive personal information under its custodianship.

IOL Tech