Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone says the county’s email and web-based applications are currently still offline as experts continue to assess a cyber intrusion.

As News 12 has reported, the county team was alerted to unusual activity that led them to take immediate action Thursday to mitigate what they believed was an intrusion.

“The aggressive containment measures allowed IT and the cybersecurity team to safely identify the source of the intrusion, with the goal of irradicating it and restoring systems,” says Bellone.

Officials say they have detected malware and that it has the hallmarks of ransomware.

“The investigation at this point has not concluded this is a ransomware incident,” says Bellone. 

Bellone says no organization, whether it be public or private, is immune to these intrusions.

Suffolk County residents are being affected by the intrusion too. Several people who came out to pay tickets were not able to.

"Wanted to get it taken care of, but they can't do anything because the system is down," says Brian Reilly, of East Islip.

He says he was told by the people in traffic court to come back in 10 days.

In the meantime, the county says it is setting up a temporary landing page that will house information pertaining to each county department, agency and critical resources.

The county is working to securely activate a number of county email addresses that are used by the public and that information will be on the website.

"We are doing everything in our power to ensure as little disruption as possible," Bellone says.

The county executive says Suffolk did prepare for a potential attack with tabletop exercises, cyber checkups and mandatory cybersecurity trainings for every employee.

MORE: Officials say some issues remain after Suffolk County cyberattack but 'no compromise to public safety'

Click HERE to watch Bellone's stream on Facebook.