The Joint Commission on Public Ethics (“JCOPE”) has given the go ahead for the State Office of Information Technology Services (“ITS”) to put the electronic Lobbying Application (“LA”) and financial disclosure statement (“FDS”) systems back online as of 7 p.m. today.  The target of this cybersecurity incident, the pre-2019 legacy online lobbying filing system, will remain offline until further notice, as previously mentioned.  

Any filings due between February 17 and March 9 will be automatically granted an extension to March 31. Additionally, the March 15 lobbying bi-monthly report deadline is also extended to March 31.

“We are pleased to be able to restore these operations knowing that the security and integrity of the data is in place,” said JCOPE Executive Director Sanford Berland. “We understand that this has been a trying time and we appreciate everyone’s patience, but we did not want to bring these systems back online until it was safe to do so.”

The information security officials at ITS have completed their forensic review process, which attempts to retrace the malicious activity step-by-step. Although no direct or circumstantial evidence of any unauthorized access of user data or credit card information has been found, any evidence or other indication suggesting unlawful use of user information will be handled in accordance with state cyber-security laws. ITS will continue to conduct testing measures to identify and address any potential vulnerabilities to prevent future incidents. Now that final forensics are complete, JCOPE will work with other state agencies, including the Office of the Attorney General and the Department of State’s Division of Consumer Protection, to ensure that any affected users are contacted and all legal obligations are met. Any information gleaned from the review process will be shared with law enforcement for investigative purposes.

The restoration of the LA also means the restoration of the public search query function for viewing submitted filings and reports via our public website at https://jcope.ny.gov/public-data. Data from the legacy online filing system will not be available until further notice.