Online learning has been cancelled in the Durham school district after a cyber attack caused its phone and email services to go down.
The Durham District School Board issued a statement on Sunday and said it was made aware of the “cyber incident” last Friday, adding that law enforcement was immediately notified of the situation.
“Upon our discovery, we immediately took steps to secure our network and retained expert assistance,” said the school board.
While schools across the Durham region remained open on Monday, online classes and literacy tests had to be suspended. Attendance needed to be taken manually, with the school board warning parents and guardians that their child’s emergency contact information may not be accessible due to the outage on phone and email services.
The cyber attack also affected “most student Chromebooks,” according to the school board’s statement.
“Our IT team has been working throughout the weekend and will continue until we are able to restore services,” said the Durham school board. “We appreciate that this incident raises a significant privacy concern, and we will be providing updates and sharing more information when we have it.”
The Durham District School Board serves 136 schools and learning centres in the east of Toronto.
Just last week, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation revealed it fell victim to a ransomware attack in late May. A statement from a cybersecurity firm hired by the teachers’ union to contain and investigate the incident explained that the attack involved an “unauthorized third party” that gained access to and encrypted its systems.
According to a report by The Canadian Press, the union said there was no evidence that the data from its systems have been misused but added that it may provide affected members with a year of credit monitoring and identity protection services.
