Freestone County commissioners approved a motion to form a cyber incident response committee after a recent email-based intrusion that affected the county jail and touched county offices.

County officials said the incident began with a legitimate-looking email and an embedded URL that, when activated, propagated messages to roughly 200 county email addresses and reached the county clerk and district clerk offices. The county’s IT staff said the infection vector appeared to be a user-level action rather than a firewall breach and described the event as an "eye opener." The IT staff recommended a committee so one person would not be solely responsible for deciding whether to escalate incidents to state investigators.

During discussion, a county official warned that escalating an event to the state (Department of Information Resources reporting) can prompt an external investigation that may cost "between 20 and 30000 dollars." The court agreed the county’s IT employee should brief a small group before choosing costly escalation steps.

A motion to create a "cyber worker's responsibility committee" named the committee membership as Brian, Glenn McBroom, Jeremy Shipley, Ben Jarvis and the motion-maker. The court carried the motion by voice vote.

County officials said the attack originated through routine inter-jail correspondence and that increased training and a briefing process are the immediate steps to reduce risk. The court did not adopt a written policy tying committee decisions to a specific cost threshold; the action was to form the committee and have it advise on incident reporting and escalation.

The court may discuss committee procedures and escalation thresholds at a future meeting.