Data breach affecting SCSO email

WALLACE – The Shoshone County Sheriff’s Office is experiencing email outages following a reported data breach at the cloud hosting and IT company it uses to host the online service.  

According to Undersheriff Lance Stutzke, the SCSO has been without email services since late last week, and the hosting company, CJIS Solutions, is working to recover all the SCSO’s emails and accounts.  

CJIS, or Criminal Justice Information Services, is a division of the FBI that sets strict security standards for handling sensitive law enforcement data. Any technology provider working with law enforcement data must comply with the strict CJIS Security Policy. 

CJIS Solutions, based in New Jersey, specifically works with law enforcement and was the U.S. based company to offer cloud hosting specifically designed around CJIS compliance. 

Stutzke said on Wednesday that from what he has been told, none of the data involved in the breach originated from the SCSO. Still, the outage they’re experiencing is due to the measures being taken by CJIS Solutions to rectify the situation.  

The outage has caused issues beyond office communication, which Stutzke addressed in a release on Wednesday morning.  

“We are working to come up with some options for the interim,” Stutzke said. “If you have emailed a Public Records Request recently, we are unable to access it, and we ask for you to call into our records clerk. We will update when we have a resolution to this issue.”  

Until the issue is resolved, Stutzke asks that anyone needing to contact the SCSO call (208) 556-1114.