"This might be an overreaction," says Tim Dolehanty, Ingham county controller, "but I would rather overreact and make sure all traces of the malware are gone before we boot up any machines than lose any money to the malware itself."
That overreaction is why every single computer screen in the Ingham county courthouse is black.
1600 work stations are shut down because of the malware that was trying to access financial information.
"Given the damage something like this could do, if it had been given access to county finances and was able to get into county accounts and maybe start draining moneys or whatever, this is very important to us," explains Dolehanty.
That's why Ingham county clerk Barb Byrum closed her offices on Monday, because the information in their files can be extremely sensitive.
Dolehanty says no data was accessed, but IT experts will spend time inoculating every single computer in their system county-wide.
That can take only 15 minutes for some computers, and upwards of two hours for others, according to Byrum.
That means it could be days before county workers will be allowed to boot back up.
Still, Dolehanty says he's pleased, and would rather err on the side of caution:
"I'm pretty happy that we were able to catch this when we did--it would've been nicer if it had been prevented outright, clearly that wasn't in the cards, so we'll take the second best option."
UPDATE - BREAKING - The Ingham County Clerk has closed both offices in Mason and in Lansing, due to concerns over computer network security. The offices will be closed for the remainder of the day.
According to the clerk, the Special Election slated for Tuesday, May 2, 2017 for East Lansing and Haslett Public Schools continues to be secure and will be conducted as planned. Barb Byrum says the precautionary procedure will not impact the process of tomorrow's election and the results.
