Just days before the Aug. 3 scheduled start of school, officials at the Athens Independent School District in East Texas received a shock.
Cybercriminals had attacked the district’s entire computer network, encrypting all the data and demanding $50,000 in ransom for its release. Access to everything from teacher communications to student assignments was blocked.
“It was terribly disruptive, to put it mildly,” said Toni Clay, the district’s spokesperson. “We no longer had access to any student information, such as schedules, email addresses, anything that would be stored. Internally, we had no staff information. It was all frozen.”
The plan had been to begin school online for three weeks and then transition to a hybrid model of both virtual and in-person classes. Instead, officials ended up delaying the start of school completely for a week.
Athens is one of at least 16 school districts, from California to New Jersey, that have been victimized in a rash of ransomware attacks since the end of July.
Some have been forced to push back school reopening dates. Others that already started school have had to cancel classes for a day or more.
The attacks have placed a heavy burden on school administrators as they grapple with whether it’s safe for students and teachers to return in person and whether schools are prepared to handle social distancing and other requirements.
School information technology staffs, meanwhile, have been consumed with the transition to virtual learning, making districts even more vulnerable to hackers, experts say.
“School district IT shops were supporting the network and the remote environment and software upgrades and training. They were overwhelmed by requests for help in ways they had never seen before,” said Alan Shark, executive director of the Pu ..
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