Radio silence re: ransomware attack on Texas courts

Your correspondent received a notice my information was in a data breach at a company called Blackbaud which is a digital platform for managing nonprofit donors. The company paid a ransomware demand, despite advisories against doing so from the US Treasury. Insurance companies, by contrast, have defended ransomware payouts. 

This reminds me we've received almost zero information about the ransomware attack on Texas courts last year, and no journalist of whom I'm aware has dug into the topic beyond notices based on agency press releases.

The breach impacted not just the Texas court system but all the agencies under the Office of Court Administration's umbrella, including the Forensic Science Commission, the State Prosecuting Attorney, the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs.

I've heard anecdotally the OCFW faced problems filing briefs in the aftermath of the breach. The Forensic Science Commission was in the middle of rolling out accreditation for forensic analysts when it happened: no word on how any of that was impacted.

Not only has there been virtually no journalism on the topic, there were no public hearings in the interim (the year between Texas' biennial legislative sessions) for legislators to learn what happened or how to prevent it from happening again. It's been near-complete radio silence.

I'd like to believe Texas officials quietly fixed the problem and it won't happen again, but after watching how the state was managed during last week's Snowpocalypse, who believes anyone in state government is either a) competent enough to actually fix problems and b) humble enough not to brag about it if they did? Grits suspects the silence instead is cover for problems we weren't told about.

MORE: Here's an academic piece by David Slayton from the Office of Court Administration giving the most detail I've seen on the Texas courts breach. ALSO: There was another major ransomware attack on CJ systems in Texarkana in December.