Fulton County property tax system restored, now accepting payments after cyberattack

Fulton County officials say the “public-facing” part of the county’s tax system is fully restored after a ransomware attack in late January.

Fulton County Tax Commissioner Arthur Ferdinand said the office is now able to accept property tax payments online, in person or by phone.

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Ferdinand pointed out that the office never closed during the outage and processed more than $50 million in property taxes in February.

The hackers twice threatened to release sensitive data on the dark web if the county didn’t pay a ransom. But Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts said the county never paid anything, nor did any other entity pay on the county’s behalf.

He also said there’s no indication that any personal information was compromised.

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Ferdinand says the tax system will now be less vulnerable in the future.

“While this incident was unfortunate, we are going to be in a much better place going forward,” he said. “Most of our property tax systems are now going to be housed in the cloud in some way or fashion.”

During a brief news conference Friday, Pitts said all of the county’s phone systems are operational, with a few exceptions. He said law enforcement is still investigating the attack and could not comment on where that investigation stands.

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