BY PEPPER FISHER

Port Angeles – Washington state courts’ online systems began returning online Monday after being shut down for about two weeks.

The Administrative Office of the Courts took down the network November 4 after identifying “unauthorized activity.” About 50 courts around the state, including here in Clallam County, issued emergency administrative orders, citing their inability to access case information, criminal history and other records.

But on Monday, the state announced it had begun bringing systems on the network back up after testing showed the unauthorized activity had been eliminated.

Clallam County District Court 2 Administrator Mark Downing told KONP on Monday that all systems here were back up and running, though there were a few glitches happening because “everybody was trying to do everything at once”.

The news release stated there was no known data breach or ransomware demand, thanks to “quick action taken to isolate and secure.”

Firearm purchases have also been affected by the outage, as the state system was needed to conduct background checks. The State Patrol reported last week that they normally process 400-1000 background checks per day, so the backlog is significant. But WSP Sgt. Jermaine Walker said Monday that in the first 8 hours after service was restored, their personnel were able to complete over 6,500 of the backlogged checks and the work will continue this week to “bring the system back to its regular cadence of operations.”