Belize courts paralyzed by major cyberattack, full shutdown ordered

Belize: A ransomware cyberattack has rendered the Senior Courts of Belize completely dysfunctional, causing a full system shutdown on all devices issued to employees in an effort to investigate and prevent further infiltration into their systems.

In an effort to contain the cyberattack, an urgent memo was processed and sent from the Office of Chief Justice for all workers to shut down all work devices and directly deliver them to the IT Department at the Treasury Building in Belize.

According to the information, all the employees of the court with no exceptions were asked to label their devices with their full names and passwords and submit the devices to the allocated authorities. The incident left many workers confused on why and wondered if the court was not telling them the full information. 

The drastic actions were taken after the discovery of the cyber attack was uncovered by the internal IT unit which confirmed that the Courts systems had been compromised. The officials say that they are cooperating alongside a specialized incident response team to assess and control the breach. 

Meanwhile some of the court staff are not convinced that the court is telling all the information to the public. With one staff member whose name has been stricken from the record says that the higher level administration is withholding the full extent of the repercussion of the attack, the  breach may have accessed the courts vital data altering or deleting the data and some files may have been exposed or lost in the process. The concerns raised were for the vital areas of the Court such as the case management systems, digital records, and the overall operations of the judiciary system. 

In spite of these concerns the Senior Courts of Belize seems to remain committed to serving the people through the judiciary service and are working to fully restore the IT systems as quickly and safely as possible. Leaving the citizens concerned and with questions over the long term effect that may occur due to the cyberattack.