In a year when they were already dealing with COVID-19 and then accusations that a teacher had improper emails with students, Union Community School District in Iowa found itself with a third major challenge — a ransomware attack. But whereas the district has publicly acknowledged and discussed its response to the first two challenges, they…
Category: Education Sector
UMD-Baltimore updates Accellion breach notification after finding PII and PHI involved
On April 1, DataBreaches.net reported that the University of Maryland, Baltimore was one of the educational entities impacted by the CLOP hack and exfiltration of Accellion client data, but that neither UMD nor Accellion even knew that until the last week in March. This week, the university issued an updated press release that reveals that…
FL: Safeguard lapse allowed student to access and disrupt Pinellas County school computer system, police say
Walt Buteau reports: A computer system safeguard that the Pinellas County School District was paying for unknowingly lapsed this year, allowing a 17-year-old student to access and disrupt the district’s system, according to school officials. According to a St. Petersburg police arrest affidavit, the high school student allegedly broke into the district computer network March…
WA: Clover Park School District investigating ransomware attack
Kevin Ko reports: Facing a “system outage,” the Clover Park School District is investigating why it’s “experiencing a technology issue,” a district spokesperson said in a statement. “We are working with third-party cybersecurity specialists to investigate the root cause of this system outage and will provide more information as our investigation continues,” the statement reads….
IN: Eastern Hancock schools fall victim to ransomware attack
Eastern Hancock schools in Indiana were expected to be back up and running today after the district experienced a ransomware attack over the weekend. When the district discovered the attack Monday morning, it shut down the entire network, preventing the attack from spreading. The shutdown also meant the district lost the ability to receive phone…
OH: Marietta City Schools Email Hack
Christopher Schmitt reports: The Marietta Police Department is investigating a number of Marietta City School employees’ emails being hacked. It was just released that Marietta Superintendent Will Hampton reached out to the Marietta Police last week. It was reported to the police that a number of employees’ email accounts could have been compromised since 2018….