In a world rocked by hackers, trolls and online evildoers of all stripes, the good people of the internet have long looked for a hero who would refuse to back down. Finally, someone has said enough is enough. And that someone is the government of Mecklenburg County, N.C.

The county, which includes the city of Charlotte, said on Wednesday that it would not pay a $23,000 ransom to a group of hackers who seized control of several government computer systems. The breach was announced on Tuesday when the county government said on Twitter that it was “experiencing a computer-system outage.”

“I am confident that our backup data is secure and we have the resources to fix this situation ourselves,” Dena R. Diorio, the Mecklenburg County manager, said in a statement on Wednesday. “It will take time, but with patience and hard work, all of our systems will be back up and running as soon as possible.”

Mecklenburg is the most populous county in North Carolina, and the attack compromised many of its systems. But on Wednesday it said it was “open for business, albeit somewhat slower with limited access to systems.” Without the internet, civil servants were doing their jobs using “paper processes,” it said.