Spartanburg County terminated its longtime information technology director, Jessica Gilliland, on June 10, citing concerns about cybersecurity protections, system backups, security monitoring and audit logging. The firing came after years of cyberattacks on the county's network, including a 2023 ransomware attack and a 2025 data breach that exposed personal employee information, and it was followed by a grievance appeal that ultimately upheld her dismissal.
A Nearly Two-Decade Career Ends in Dismissal
Gilliland's history with the county stretched back to 2009, when she joined the information technology department as an unpaid intern, assisting the Spartanburg County Coroner's Office with implementing a digital case management system, according to WSPA 7News, which obtained documents detailing her termination. She went on to work as a programmer and later held OnBase administrator, ERP administrator and ERP administrator II roles before becoming interim IT director in late 2021. In April 2022, she was selected as the county's information technology director. One detail about her tenure remains disputed: the station reported Gilliland had been with the county for 16 years, while The Post and Courier put the figure at 17 years when counting her unpaid internship.
The first major crisis of her tenure as director hit on April 27, 2023, when Spartanburg County suffered a ransomware attack that impacted online county services and phone lines. County IT staff detected the attack on the network and worked with a nationally accredited cybersecurity company to resolve it, the station's report notes. A county spokesperson said systems still had not fully recovered from that ransomware attack by 2024, and per the termination letter, county administration met weekly with Gilliland and her deputy for the remainder of 2023 and biweekly in 2024 to establish protocols against further incidents, according to Earl Alexander.
A Second Breach Exposed Deeper Problems
Spartanburg County experienced another data breach in August 2025, this one involving personnel onboarding files containing personally identifiable employee information. Per the termination letter, county officials said the breach revealed that critical protocols were not followed, causing system-wide disruptions and data loss. The same account indicates county leaders said standard industry practices had not been put in place, and the letter stated the issue had persisted for three years despite repeated assurances it was resolved.
The Post and Courier reported that the August 2025 breach showed critical protocols hadn't been followed, including database backups, SentinelOne deployment and multi-factor authentication, and that the coroner's online database and online backup were lost before an offline copy was used to rebuild it. Per Gilliland's account, county IT staff had detected unusual network activity and flagged it for the county's cybersecurity provider, which reported that no active issue had been identified — and the ransomware incident occurred the very next day.
911 Access and a Questionable Outage
County leaders said concerns identified during the 2025 breach extended into 2026. In March, county leaders said the county's 911 center risked losing access to the National Crime Information Center because required audit log files could not be provided to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. Yahoo News reported that SLED said Spartanburg 911 was out of compliance with federal policy governing NCIC access, though the agency noted that noncompliance does not strip an agency of any access they had at the time of the audit.
Spartanburg County reportedly experienced a third cybersecurity breach around June 11, 2026 — just a day after Gilliland's termination. The termination letter accused her of violating county policy, insubordination, showing disregard for county property and personnel through poor judgment, damaging county property, and unsatisfactory or careless work. The letter also stated that the events demonstrated a breakdown in leadership, oversight, trust and compliance, with critical vulnerabilities left unresolved despite repeated guidance.
Gilliland Pushes Back, Grievance Panel Sides With County
Gilliland has disputed much of the county's case against her. She argued she made significant security improvements and was unfairly blamed for issues beyond her control, telling the grievance appeal that she implemented multiple changes to the county's cybersecurity systems. Per the Post and Courier's reporting, she said she implemented Microsoft 365 and significantly expanded multi-factor authentication across county-managed systems, deployed SentinelOne endpoint protection with 24-hour monitoring by Sylint, and made backup improvements following the 2023 incident.
Gilliland also said some systems cited by the county were not under her direct authority, and she said she was never formally disciplined or warned that her job was in jeopardy before being fired. Still, the Employee Grievance Committee reviewed testimony and evidence from both Gilliland and County Administrator Cole Alverson following a July 9 appeal hearing, and unanimously recommended upholding the termination. Alverson accepted the committee's recommendation, leaving the termination in place.
Part of a Broader Pattern Across South Carolina
Spartanburg County's run of trouble fits a wider regional pattern. The station's own reporting notes the county has made news not once, not twice, but three times in three years because of separate cybersecurity threats, disrupting services and knocking employees offline for days to weeks at a stretch. A law enforcement official described the resulting outages as wildly inconvenient, since the affected system was officers' primary tool.
According to Fox Carolina, hackers breached nearly a dozen local government offices and agencies across South Carolina, compromising personal information for more than 500,000 people and stealing public funds. Recent attacks including those on Laurens School District 56, Spartanburg County, the city of Inman and the Greer Commission of Public Works affected more than 14,000 people's personal information, the outlet reported. The South Carolina Center for Cybersecurity said small towns are particularly vulnerable because attackers exploit human weaknesses rather than only technical ones, while cybersecurity expert Brian Shea said small governments face the same sophisticated threats as larger organizations but often lack the resources to defend against them.
In the aftermath, Spartanburg County Council unanimously approved four new IT positions, including a security engineer and an information security analyst, after replacement IT Director Tony Bryant requested them, according to the Post and Courier. The county's employee grievance procedure, posted by Spartanburg County, states that nothing in the process creates a property interest in employment or a contract of employment, and that it does not limit the authority of the county or an elected or appointed official to terminate an employee.
