Unusual activity on the school district’s server raised a red flag, and more than 800 notifications were sent to people who may have been affected by a privacy breach.
In May, there were report of 45,000 cyberattacks in 74 countries disrupting services in hospitals, telecommunications businesses and possibly even the school district in Prince Rupert.
“It took a while to figure it out,” said Sandra Jones, superintendent for School District 52. “We just had a lot of challenges with the server. I understand that this was happening elsewhere in the world.”
The school district didn’t take any chances, and once they realized the server may have been hit with the same illicit activity, they rebuilt the server to ensure its safety.
Data from current and previous staff, including vendors the school district works with, are all on the server. The district sent out 836 notifications encouraging people to change their passwords, and warning them that their information, including bank account numbers, might have been compromised.
“From our investigation we can’t see any information was taken,” Jones said, but they erred on taking “an abundance of caution to make sure everyone’s material is safe.”
The cost to rebuild and secure the server was in the range of $25,000, Jones said, but the district has a contingency fund to deal with unexpected incidents.