WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Texas — Central Texas residents are being warned about a data breach that happened in 2022.
Officials said they discovered during an investigation that an unauthorized user gained access to an email account with a member of the 277th District Court in Williamson County, who then may have seen or taken certain information.
According to officials, certain people who interacted with the court on or before Nov. 10, 2022, may have their personal information impacted.
Sensitive information impacted varies by person but county officials said it could include names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and more. Officials also said they conducted a review of the attack and plan to reach out to those who may have been affected.
Cybersecurity experts said these types of attacks are not only happening more often but that government entities like Williamson County are also increasingly becoming the target of such attacks.
"Especially for the data that they have, we see that for multiple reasons," Mitchem Boles said. "But any type of data that's taken, according to Verizon's data breach investigation report from last year, 97% of those malicious actors are motivated by financial gain."
Boles also said these types of attacks can be accessed through emails easily when it comes to scam links and phishing fraud across the internet. He also says government agencies are seemingly being attacked more frequently.
"Because of older infrastructure. They're underfunded. They don't necessarily have the protections in place for their data, for their emails and for their users," said Boles. "We know that these kinds of attacks will only increase really in number and sophistication into 2024. So we don't see it slowing down."
KVUE reached out to Williamson County officials for more information, but we were told that no interviews would be conducted at this time.
What to do if you think you were affected
If you think your identity has been stolen, you can place a credit freeze to stop anyone from creating a new credit account in your name.
The freeze can be placed by contacting any of the three major credit reporting agencies: Equifax, Experian or TransUnion. The request can be submitted online, by phone, or by mail.
UPDATE: reports to the Texas Attorney General's office claim 3,763 person's personal information exposed.
November 2022. Just now being informed.
Read the notification here.
