A cyber-attack has struck a Texas company that provides software services to schools and state and local governments across the United States.
Tyler Technologies notified customers on September 23 that its phone and computer systems had been compromised by a bad actor.
Since the incident, the website of the company has carried the message: "Our Tyler Technologies corporate website is temporarily unavailable. We are aware of the issue and are working to bring the site back online."
Customers are advised to visit Tyler's Online Support Incidents tool for online support access.
In an email sent out to customers, the Plano-based company said that the cyber-incident was uncovered on Wednesday morning. The help of external IT specialists was subsequently enlisted by the company, and law enforcement was informed of the attack.
“Upon discovery and out of an abundance of caution, we shut down points of access to external systems and immediately began investigating and remediating the problem,” Tyler’s chief information officer, Matt Bieri, told KrebsonSecurity.
"We have since engaged outside IT security and forensics experts to conduct a detailed review and help us securely restore affected equipment. We are implementing enhanced monitoring systems, and we have notified law enforcement.”
Bieri went on to say that the extent of the attack appeared to be limited to the company's internal network and phone systems.
“We currently have no reason to believe that any client data, client servers, or hosted systems were affected,” said Bieri.
Yesterday, Tyler confirmed that the attack had involved ransomware. A statement on the company's website reads: "We have confirmed that the malicious software the intruder used was ransomware. Because this is an active investigation, we will not provide any additional specifics relating to our incident response or our investigation at this time."
Tyler Technologies employs around 5,300 people. Last year the company brought in revenues of more than $1bn.
Products sold by the company include appraisal and tax software, public safety software, integrated software for courts and justice agencies, records/document management software solutions, enterprise financial software systems, and transportation software solutions for schools.