Suffolk County Civil Service exams to resume Oct. 15

The Suffolk County Civil Service exam will be held Oct. 15 after the test originally scheduled for Oct. 1 was postponed because of a cyberattack on county government, officials said.

Notifications for individuals scheduled to take the exam were going out Thursday, Thursday, said Marykate Guilfoyle, a spokeswoman for County Executive Steve Bellone.

The test will take place at Suffolk County Community College’s Selden campus, inside the Riverhead Building, at 9 a.m. next Saturday.

All other subsequent exams will be given as scheduled, Guilfoyle said.

“The rolling restoration of services is continuing, with additional services being brought back online this week,” Guilfoyle said in an email to Newsday.

Suffolk officials say they are restoring computer services gradually, beginning last week with the county 911 emergency call center and continuing this week with resumption of real estate title searches.

The county also will add a link to the Civil Service application on its temporary landing page at suffolkcountyny.gov.

Job candidates will be able to print applications and email them to civil.service@suffolkcountyny.gov, or deliver them in person to the county Civil Service office, Guilfoyle said.

The county Department of Human Resources, Personnel and Civil Service is responsible for overseeing personnel actions by more than 200  municipalities including towns, school districts and villages.

The municipalities employ a total of 40,000 people, according to the county.

Suffolk County officials delayed the Civil Service exam after the Sept. 8 cyberattack on county government.

The county took down many county web-based applications and websites as officials investigated and assessed the attack.

An anonymous group claimed responsibility for the hack in a Sept. 15 posting on the "dark web," an anonymized portion of the internet where criminal activity can occur.

The group says it is seeking a “small reward” for finding vulnerabilities in Suffolk County's computer systems.

County officials have not provided a timeline for resumption of computer-based systems.

Nor have they said whether they have received a demand for a specific ransom.

Suffolk officials have said "threat actors" have accessed personal information from one or more county agencies.

The county is offering free identity theft protection services to those who have been impacted by the hacking attempt.

By Vera Chinese

vera.chinese@newsday.com@VeraChinese

Vera Chinese covers Suffolk County government and politics. She joined Newsday in 2017 after working as an editor for the East End lifestyle publication northforker and a general assignment reporter for the New York Daily News.