The National Center for State Courts (NCSC), with funding from the State Justice Institute (SJI), launched a national initiative to strengthen state courts readiness for cyberattacks and technical disruptions through Cybersecurity and Disaster Recovery Workshops. These regional sessions (first virtual and then in-person) bring together judges, administrators, IT leaders, and communications staff to enhance preparedness, recovery, and continuity capabilities.
The first workshop was held in September 2024, and sessions have now been completed in four of five regions nationwide. The final workshop will take place in Rhode Island in April 2026. The most recent session, hosted in St. Louis, Missouri, included participation from Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Earlier workshops engaged participants from Alaska, Arizona, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, New Mexico, Northern Mariana Islands, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Virginia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Each workshop follows a collaborative team-based approach, bringing together a judicial officer, IT leadership, court administrator, public information officer, emergency manager, and general counsel to collaborate through structured exercises that test and strengthen cybersecurity and disaster recovery plans. As part of each workshop, participants receive education and guidance, along with a court focused workbook and template designed to help courts create or refine incident response plans found here: The 2025 Cybersecurity and Disaster Recovery Workshop Workbook.
Pictured: Matt Brandes, Data Center & Enterprise Services Manager; Patrick Brooks, Director, Information Technology Services; Rick Morrisey, Deputy State Courts Administrator; Chief Justice W. Brent Powell, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri; and Natalie Wilson, Information Security Manager; from the Missouri State Courts participate in a cybersecurity tabletop exercise.
“These workshops, and especially the tabletop exercises and workbook have set the standard for effective court focused cybersecurity education.”
– Shay Cleary, NCSC
“I thought the interaction between the NCSC, CIS, and State Court agencies was compelling and highly informative.”
-Participant from post event survey
This collaborative effort between NCSC, the Center for Internet Security (CIS), and the Chief Information Technology Officers Consortium (CITOC) is helping courts nationwide improve resilience and ensure continuity of essential justice services.
May 1, 2024
Judges in family courts handle the complex dynamics of familial conflicts, particularly in cases involving high parental conflict. Parenting education is essential, serving as a vital tool to ensure children’s well-being during parental separations and promote smoother family transitions. “The Families in Transition (FIT) Parenting Course,” a 1.5-hour online program designed to complement existing parenting …
April 1, 2024
The Good Neighbor Emergency Assistance (GNEA) and the Iowa Judicial Branch have partnered to support The Housing Navigator Program. The Navigator at GNEA assists their clients in finding sustainable forms of housing assistance in Story County, Iowa, with the aim of preventing homelessness. They work with clients holistically to determine which programs offered by the …
March 1, 2024
The Judicial Innovation Fellowship (JIF) is an initiative incubated at the Justice Lab at Georgetown Law Center’s Institute for Technology Law and Policy. The JIF is a year-long fellowship for technologists, designers, and user testers to transform justice across state, local, territorial, and tribal courts. It is an exciting new opportunity for technologists, product people, and designers …
February 1, 2024
Pretrial policies have undergone significant change and advancement over the last decade. In 2013, the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ) and the Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA) endorsed the COSCA Policy Paper on Evidence-Based Pretrial Release. CCJ and COSCA also hosted five Pretrial Regional Summits between May 2016 and November 2018 to facilitate the …
January 1, 2024
Most states do not have specialized family court judges, let alone judges dedicated to delinquency cases. Even in states that do have a family court structure, juvenile justice often gets short shrift compared to child welfare in terms of court attention, resources, and improvement efforts. In addition, most states do not provide juvenile court judges …
December 1, 2023
The Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts (AOPC) is applying the technical and business definitions of the National Open Data Standards (NODS) to resolve enduring, and common, obstacles to collecting good civil and family court data. Developed by the Conference of State Court Administrators and the National Center for State Courts (NCSC), NODS is intended to …