The Department of Justice and Constitutional development released a statement on the 10^th of October 2021 announcing that they are gradually recovering from a ransom-ware attack that occurred in September 2021.

The attack left the department unable to assist customers with services for several weeks. “Over the past few weeks, the team of departmental offices, industry specialists and advisors from organs of state have successfully contained the spread of the malware. “The team has also focused on ensuring that the payment of child maintenance money to beneficiaries is disrupted as little as possible,” the statement read as issued by the Department’s spokesperson, Mr. Steve Mahlangu.

The Department also announced that electronic recordings of court proceedings are secure and intact to ensure that courts are able to operate as normal. “Where courts are still experiencing challenges, a special capacity has been deployed to attend to queries on a case-by-case basis,” the department announced.

The Department also stated that the web portal used by transcribers to download court recordings for transcription purposes has also been successfully restored and also indicated that significant progress has been made in restoring the Integrated Case Management System (ICMS), which is an administrative system used by courts particularly the office of the master of the high court, with parts of the system such as Curatorship and online portals used for historic searches already accessible. “More work will be done in the next few days to complete the process of bringing back online functionality in respect of Trusts, Deceased estates and insolvencies (amongst others),” the statement further read.