Cyber Incident Victim: Cabarrus County
Date:
Oct 2023
Location:
United States of America
Summary
A cybersecurity incident affecting a Greensboro-based vendor disrupted certain online services for the Cabarrus County Register of Deeds, specifically public access to land records and indexes of births, deaths, and marriages. While these services remained offline, the Register of Deeds office maintained normal operations for in-person document recording and other tasks, with electronic recordings and online marriage applications still functional. County IT personnel executed precautionary measures including temporarily severing internal vendor connections and continued monitoring network activity; no other county services were compromised by the event.
| CIA Posture | Motives | Tactics, Techniques & Procedures |
|---|---|---|
| Available to members | 1 motive | 1 technique |
| Threat Actors | Type | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 0 actors | Available to members | Available to members |
Description
On or around October 1, 2023, a cybersecurity incident involving a Greensboro-based records website vendor disrupted select online services provided by the Cabarrus County Register of Deeds. The incident impacted public access to digital land records and indexes of births, deaths, and marriages hosted by the vendor’s systems. Cabarrus County Information Technology Services officials activated their incident response plan upon notification of the vendor’s cybersecurity event. As a precautionary measure, they temporarily severed internal connections to the vendor’s platform to prevent potential lateral movement of threats into county networks. This action did not affect other Cabarrus County government services, which remained fully operational throughout the incident. The Register of Deeds’ physical office at the Government Center in Concord continued normal operations, including in-person document recording and all standard administrative functions. Electronic recording submissions and online marriage applications—services not reliant on the compromised vendor systems—also remained accessible to the public during the outage.
County cybersecurity personnel maintained continuous monitoring of internal networks and connected devices following the containment actions. The disruption exclusively affected web-based public access to historical records and indexes managed by the third-party vendor, with no evidence of impact to Cabarrus County’s core infrastructure or data integrity. Restoration timelines for the offline services were not disclosed in available reporting. The Register of Deeds office confirmed its ability to process all transactions and record requests via alternative channels despite the ongoing vendor-related service interruption. Cabarrus County’s response prioritized maintaining critical operations while containing potential risks through coordinated IT security protocols.