photo by: Contributed

Douglas County Sheriff Jay Armbrister, left, and Eudora City Manager Zack Daniel

Government officials continue to say very little about a cybersecurity issue that has significantly affected taxpayer-funded computer systems, including whether incidents in the City of Eudora and the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office are related and whether the incidents have exposed the personal financial and other private data of residents.

After initially saying nothing apart from noting “technical issues” with its website, the sheriff’s office revealed only that its computer system had fallen prey to “suspicious activity,” that it was investigating and that the emergency 911 system was still operational. The county has rejected an open-records request seeking more information, citing an ongoing investigation and claiming that sharing information would “jeopardize public safety.”

On Wednesday, in response to questions from the Journal-World, Eudora’s city manager, Zack Daniel, confirmed that the city had identified a “network security incident.” Without providing details, he said that the incident “impacted a limited number of systems.”

While Daniel, like the county, declined to respond to numerous questions, he was a bit more forthcoming than Douglas County officials, saying in an email to the Journal-World that it did not appear to be the case “at this stage” that personal financial data of residents had been breached. Daniel said that if the investigation suggests otherwise, “the City will make the appropriate outreach to potentially impacted individuals.”

Daniel also gave a broad outline of how Eudora had responded to the Aug. 11 incident. He said the the city “promptly initiated incident response procedures, secured its environment, and engaged external experts to assist with investigation and response.” He added that the incident has since been contained and “we are not currently experiencing any effects on regular City functions. That said, the investigation (including a review to determine if personal information may have been impacted) is ongoing.”

The Journal-World has heard from some sources that the Eudora and sheriff’s office incidents — which apparently occurred on or around the same day, Aug. 11 — are related, but no official would confirm or deny that.

Daniel would not address whether the city incident is related to the one that struck the sheriff’s office.

“I cannot comment on the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office incident,” he said.

Similarly, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, George Diepenbrock, said, “We cannot speak for the City of Eudora.”

Eudora’s mayor, Tim Bruce, and vice mayor, Alex Curnes, have not responded to questions regarding the incident in their city.

Diepenbrock declined to answer repeated questions about whether people’s personal information had been exposed.

He did on Wednesday, nearly three weeks after the incident, indicate that the office had disconnected some of its systems after detecting the suspicious activity.

Douglas County Sheriff Jay Armbrister’s office is in charge of various functions, such as law enforcement in the county, jail operations, inmate transport, providing courtroom security, serving legal papers such as summonses and subpoenas and executing court orders.

“Upon noticing the suspicious activity on some of our computer systems and starting the investigation, we disconnected our systems out of precaution, which prevented connectivity to the disconnected systems,” Diepenbrock said in an email.

The effect that that has had on other law enforcement agencies and court proceedings is not entirely clear.

At least three Lawrence police officers in the past week have made mention while testifying in court that they did not have access to their reports because they currently lacked access to the Spillman CAD system, the public safety software that the Lawrence Police Department and other agencies use.

One officer testified in a burglary case Wednesday that police had used Spillman to identify a suspect at the scene back in March. It’s not clear what officers in the same situation might rely on today.

Laura McCabe, a spokeswoman for the department, said that the police department’s own systems were not affected, but once the department was notified of issues with the sheriff’s system, it disconnected from the shared network.

“We’ve remained disconnected from Spillman and the network since Tuesday, August 11, 2026,” McCabe said in an email.

She said that the ability to dispatch officers had not been interrupted, but that officers are “writing reports and filing them internally.”

McCabe said she was not aware of any disruptions within the courts.

“We have internal records for cases developed since the disruption and any previous cases would already be in the court’s possession,” she said.

Anyone requesting open records or certain police reports may be out of luck, at least temporarily. McCabe has indicated that the department does not have access to its records management system, including “any reports written from August 15, 2014, through August 12, 2026.”

“Once we are able to access our system, we will conduct a proper search at that time and notify [requesters] of any responsive records,” she said.

Neither the City of Eudora nor the sheriff’s office would confirm or deny that the security incidents were caused by ransomware, which has infiltrated an increasing number of government computer systems in recent years, including an incident in October of 2023, when a Russian-based ransomware group wreaked havoc on the statewide computer system for Kansas’ courts.