On Thursday, Dairyland Sentinel reported that the Wisconsin Ethics Commission’s various online databases were offline.
On Friday, the Commission issued a press release alerting other media outlets of the problems and providing some additional information as to why the sites were not working properly.
On Monday, September 9, the Wisconsin Ethics Commission website experienced a temporary disruption. The campaign finance information system (CFIS), lobbying website, and statement of economic interest (SEI) website were temporarily taken offline while the state’s cybersecurity team investigated suspicious activity. As of Tuesday, September 10, the lobbying website and SEI websites were restored. The CFIS services are expected to be restored in a few days’ time. The systems affected by the outage primarily contain public data that is otherwise publicly available on the website. Security investigation and analysis so far has not uncovered any indications of a data breach, but the Department’s Division of Enterprise Technology is collaborating with the Commission to continue recovery and monitoring to ensure a prompt return to normal operations.
Wisconsin Ethics commission Statement
Journalists and citizens utilize the commission’s website to access and report findings gleaned from the reams of data therein. They are important tools that keep citizens informed, something that is particularly important during election season.
Both the disruption, and the suspicious activity that may have caused it, are troubling developments. We will keep you posted as this story develops.
