Maine’s court system wants to hire its first full-time cybersecurity person, years after records started becoming available online.
Six of the state’s 16 counties currently have their court dockets, including case information and some schedules, online. The judiciary said all counties should be online by February 2027.
As more cases — including parental rights, criminal cases and foreclosures — move to online filing, the judiciary is asking for funding for a full-time cybersecurity position. The person would take over duties from a handful of people who share the security, the system said.
“Important and sensitive” information flows through the judiciary that needs to be protected, State Court Administrator Amy Quinlan said. A full-time person to “analyze, plan, test, and develop action plans” to prevent and prepare for an attack is needed, she said.
Funding for the position must be approved by the Maine Legislature as part of a supplemental budget. It is expected to cost nearly $37,000 for the 2026-27 fiscal year. That amount could rise to nearly $155,000 for the year after, according to Quinlan’s testimony.
Even in the most basic court case, there is information that the public should not have access to, such as Social Security numbers, cybersecurity expert Joseph Steinberg said. It’s also important to make sure the online court record system isn’t a gateway into the internal court system, he said.
Some court cases are not available to the public, but people involved can still file electronically and view documents.
The cybersecurity position is for overseeing the court’s online records, as well as its websites, emails and internal systems, spokesperson Barbara Cardone said.
“This is really important when we are building technology infrastructure,” Quinlan said at the hearing.
The judiciary declined to comment further.
“The main point is if you are going to move more and more things online, the need for having somebody dedicated to security goes up dramatically,” Steinberg said.
Courts spend a lot of money on physical security, from metal detectors to guards, Steinberg said. But the odds of a cyber attack are likely higher than a physical attack, he said.
“We don’t always view the world that way and somebody modifying rulings could cause all sorts of chaos and danger,” Steinberg said.
Cybersecurity is designed to limit the risks of bringing the court records online because there are numerous perks of an electronic system, he said.
The court’s case management system is expected to be fully online by February 2027. It is an “ambitious schedule” but the courts are excited, Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Valerie Stanfill said in a statement.
Traffic court records moved online in 2018 and all court cases in trial courts were supposed to be accessible online by 2022, according to a 2020 Bangor Daily News article.
Documents from some courts were available online in 2023, however that access was “temporarily” shut off late that year because there were vulnerabilities in the online system, Cardone said.
Access to documents has not been widely restored by time of publication. People can still log on and see general court information but documents are not available for most cases.
Other states using Tyler Technologies, the company in charge of bringing court records online, had similar issues. In 2022, California reported more than 322,000 confidential records were available when they were not supposed to be, and Kansas had a security breach that took all records offline in late 2023. It took Kansas nearly nine months to bring all records back online and resume electronic filing, according to its court system.
In March 2024, an unauthorized third-party got access to restricted data including Social Security numbers, dates of birth and individual taxpayer identification numbers. Tyler reached a settlement in the class action lawsuit in 2025.
