Cabarrus County

The Cabarrus County Register of Deeds operates as a county-level office in North Carolina, tasked with the official recording and preservation of property transactions and vital events. Its core services include accepting and filing deeds, mortgages, liens, and other land records, as well as maintaining indexes and issuing certified copies of birth, death, and marriage certificates. The office serves Cabarrus County residents, real estate professionals, attorneys, and others requiring documentation of property ownership or vital statistics. Electronic recording capabilities and an online marriage license application system enhance accessibility for constituents, while in-person services remain available for traditional document submission and record retrieval.

Operational continuity was demonstrated during a cybersecurity incident in October 2023, when a breach at a Greensboro-based vendor disrupted the Register's public-facing online systems for land records and vital indexes. Despite this outage, the office continued in-person document recording and kept electronic recording and online marriage applications functional, indicating a partial redundancy in service delivery. County IT personnel responded by severing connections to the affected vendor and monitoring network activity, successfully preventing compromise of other county services. This event underscores the Register's dependence on third-party technology providers for public access portals and its adherence to incident response protocols that prioritize essential functions. Additionally, the broader Cabarrus County government, which encompasses the Register of Deeds, experienced a significant financial loss in 2019 due to a business email compromise scam targeting a construction project payment. That incident involved the fraudulent redirection of $2.5 million, with only partial recovery, highlighting the county's exposure to sophisticated phishing attacks and the financial risks inherent in vendor payment processes. While the 2019 event did not directly disrupt Register of Deeds services, it reflects the cybersecurity challenges faced by the county's administrative operations, including those of its elected offices.