MONROE — County officials continue to investigate some type of significant network breach that hit hard last winter and impacted phones and other systems for nearly a month before technicians got service fully restored.

But the investigation into what caused the issue has not been concluded and officials have yet to report any information to the public about the incident. A similar situation in Iowa County appears to mirror the Green County incident but officials there also have declined to comment in any detail.

In early February, Green County went nearly three weeks with many programs, including phone systems, out of service. The incident — a network interruption — could be anything, including a hack, ransomware, or something less odious. But months later, they still are not releasing any information, at least not publicly.

“I haven’t received a report on that,” said Green County Board Chairman Jerry Guth, on Monday, May 5. “I do think we are still investigating.”

He referred all questions about the matter to either Green County Clerk Arianna Voegeli or the county’s legal counsel. Voegeli said she would investigate the matter, but did not immediately provide any comment on the status.

The initial disruption in February first caused county government phones and internet to go down. Then, for more than a week, county workers had to scramble and improvise, while many systems were offline.

“Upon learning of the incident, Green County took certain systems offline out of an abundance of caution and began a thorough investigation with leading information security professionals,” said Voegeli on Feb. 13 in a statement updating the investigation at that time. “Our investigation is still ongoing, but at this time we cannot say for certain what information or data — if any — has been impacted as a result.”

The Green County Sheriff’s Office, which uses a separate government communications network, was not impacted by the disruption.

According to published reports, on April 30, a portion of Iowa County’s computer network was offline due to suspected ‘suspicious activity.’ That county also said little about the scope, timing, and nature of the activity. Iowa County officials merely said it is working with cybersecurity experts to investigate. Officials there said some government services and functions would likely be delayed.

As was the case in Green County, the Iowa County Emergency Response functions remained operational, including 911 services. 

“Iowa County appreciates patience as we work to assess the situation and work to resolve the issue,” said Larry Bierke, Iowa County administrator in an April 30 statement. “At this time, we do not have any ETA for resolution.” 

Last week a major outage to county systems also plagued DuPage County, Ill., in the suburbs west of Chicago. But the damage is not just limited to county governments — in January, a statewide system outage related to child support payments caused delays.