UPDATE: This situation was resolved on April 24th, 2024.
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Fulton County, Georgia, experienced a cyberattack on the county’s government system on January 29, 2024 which knocked the primary index offline and prevented Simplified Screening and all background screening providers from utilizing the county’s online public access index to perform initial criminal history investigations. While Fulton County has made progress to restore access to their court records, they are still unavailable remotely.
Many counties in the United States have court records that are not available remotely or they have only partial record information available remotely. In those counties, Simplified has a worldwide network of court researchers that physically perform research in the court, which is currently the process we must use to perform searches in Fulton County.
As such, searches in Fulton County can take longer than they typically do. Prior to the cyberattack, Simplified had an average turnaround time of less than 24 hours (typically same day) for most searches. For any searches in Fulton County today, you should expect an average turnaround time of 1 or 2 days.
Additional issues to be aware of:
- Fulton County cannot confirm if criminal record information for cases on or after January 29th, 2024 is in their court records at this time.
- Some court records may require the assistance of court clerks to verify information. Court clerks are currently unavailable to support this which may result in some searches being unable to be completed.
- The date of full-resolution of the issue is unknown.
