Hundreds of law enforcement agencies have access again to a regional information system that was shut down for three days after being attacked by a worm, authorities said.

The Northwest Ohio Regional Information System was partially restored by 7:30 p.m. Friday and almost fully operational on Saturday, said the system’s director Pat Wright.

As of Monday afternoon, only a few departments were not back up and running — held back largely because of old operating systems, Mr. Wright said.

“We are still determining how we want to support them,” Mr. Wright said. “They’ll be able to run, but it’s how do we want them on the network. ... Everybody is all in the same pool right now, and we don’t want to do that anymore. Either you’re running, or have the ability to run the latest and greatest, or we just have to rethink how we were supporting and bringing them all in.”

Mr. Wright said agencies with older, incompatible operating software will have to upgrade.

The system, NORIS, was intermittently functional on Wednesday last week, but on Thursday had to be completely shut down after a worm, Conficker, was discovered in the system.

Mr. Wright said he does not believe the attack was malicious or intentional, but was perhaps loaded by an infected flash drive to a computer within the system’s network.

“I doubt it was intentional,” he said.

The company bought thousands of dollars in software to filter out Internet traffic that would carry a virus, although Mr. Wright does not believe Conficker accessed NORIS via the Internet. He added that, although they’ve upgraded their safety features, there is always a risk of another infection.

“We are significantly better than we were before,” he said. “I’m glad it’s behind us.”

Information system employees put in long hours to get the system back up and running, Mr. Wright said, noting that staff members were working 30-hour days.

Agencies that use NORIS said on Friday they were relying on outside agencies in the area to run warrant or license plate checks on individuals if they were stopped by a police officer.

Other agencies, such as Toledo Municipal Court, were dealing with a backlog of information that would have to be updated once the system was up and running.

On Monday, clerk Vallie Bowman-English said the court’s system was fully operational on Saturday and court officials worked on overtime over a 26-hour period to update the Web site.

“Everything is going great,” she said. “Everything is running at a good pace.”

Contact Taylor Dungjen at: tdungjen@theblade.com or 419-724-6054.

First Published February 28, 2012, 1:05 a.m.