Cott Systems outage impacts the Ouachita Parish Clerk of Court’s website

MONROE, La. (KNOE) - Since December, the Ouachita Parish Clerk of Court’s website has been down. They say it’s due to their website provider, Cott Systems.

Cott Systems issued the following statement to their customers Jan. 12, 2023:

“On December 26, 2022, Cott Systems, Inc. (”Cott”), our land records management (case management) provider, began experiencing technical difficulties which were determined to be the result of a cyber incident. We have been assured that all efforts are being made to confirm our data is secure prior to resuming services. With the assistance of third-party cyber forensic specialists, efforts to resume operations will continue 24/7 until Ouachita Parish is fully functional. Cott Systems understands that this is a critical situation and has assured us that the ongoing efforts are necessary to protect our data to the fullest extent possible. We will provide further updates as they are available. Thank you all for your patience and understanding.”

The Ouachita Parish Clerk of Court’s office posted an update on Wednesday, Jan. 18 saying the company hopes to have its website up and running within a week.

Since the outage, they say foot traffic has definitely increased in the office.

But, thankfully, the Ouachita Parish Clerk of Court’s office says they did not have any of their data breached.

“Nothing in Ouachita Parish was compromised because we have our own server,” says Dana Benson, the Ouachita Parish Clerk of Court. “They only have our website...we have not missed a beat as far as getting the job done.”

Benson says she knows it’s put customers who have subscriptions to their website in a bind over the last few weeks.

“We will take care of the issue of the fact that they paid for their subscription and have not been able to use it, we will compensate them for that,” says Benson.

We will post updates on this web story when we receive them and you can check the Ouachita Parish Clerk of Court’s website for more information.

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