Fox5 in D.C. reports Prince George’s County Public Schools revealed Monday its network experienced a cyber attack.
The August 14 notice on the district’s website reads:
August 14, 2023 – Update on PGCPS Network Outage
Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS) experienced a cyber attack on the system’s network that was detected early Monday morning, Aug. 14. An estimated 4,500 user accounts out of 180,000 were impacted, primarily staff accounts. The school system is still assessing the full scope of this incident, but as of this time, the main business and student information systems – Oracle and SchoolMAX – do not appear to be impacted by this event.
Critical network systems have been restored and additional functions will continue to be brought back online tonight; however, out of an abundance of caution, all PGCPS users will be required to reset their passwords on Tuesday, Aug. 15.
Additionally, the impacted users of this cyber event will be contacted in the coming days with further information regarding their accounts pending further review by a team of external cybersecurity experts.
As of yesterday, then, there was no mention of whether this might be a ransomware incident or if there has been any ransom demand received.
Kudos to the district for posting a notice on their site within hours of discovering the attack.
h/t, Doug Levin