In the coming weeks, internet pages may look different as King County Information Technology begins blocking select ads. These are third party ads that can bring malware and viruses into our network, compromise security and/or privacy or take entire programs, systems or operations offline.

“Security is THE top issue in our industry right now,” said Ralph Johnson, KCIT Chief Information Security and Privacy Officer. “We’ve had two major incidents in the past four months that caused King County employees to lose an entire day’s work.” This ad-blocking project will drastically reduce the incursions by attempting to identify good ads from bad ads before they appear on the screen.

Employees should not notice a change to the layout of webpages. Blocked ads will be blocked in the background. However, if a user clicks on a potentially malicious ad, they may receive a message explaining that the ad is blocked by King County. Look for the changes by September 1.

Ad blocking is not the only step that KCIT is taking to reduce the risk of malware and compromise to our systems. We’re also working on local administrator right and workstation updates. You will hear more about these over the next few months.