Groveport Madison schools still dealing with hacker fallout
GROVEPORT, Ohio (WCMH) – A little more than a week after its systems were compromised, Groveport Madison Schools (GMS) continues to deal with the effects caused by a hack.
“There’s a saying in cyber security: that it’s not if, it’s when,” said Nate Saum, Chief Technology Officer for GMS.
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The district’s “when” was last Tuesday. Saum said employees noticed they couldn’t access things like copiers and other systems. A ransomware attack from a hacking group known as BlackSuit, was to blame, according to the district.
“It’s been a challenge absolutely, you feel like why us to some extent, why did we get hit, we’re just trying to do a good thing and educate students and care about our community,” Saum said.
GMS has been working with the Department of Homeland Security on this situation. They initially shut down internet access while servers were repaired, according to a GMS post on social media. That led to more pencil and paper learning. The district on Tuesday of this week was able to turn internet access back on for all Chromebooks.
“We’re in a much better position than where we were last Tuesday and I also think we were in a good position technology-wise to withstand this sort of attack,” Saum said. “I can’t say all of our systems are back online, they most certainly aren’t but in the classroom, things are going very well.”
Out of concern the hacking group is still out there, Saum did not want to go into details about what exactly is back to normal and when everything will be back to normal.
“I think our staff and students are going to recognize things as back to normal much sooner than we’re going to feel it in the tech department. We’re going to be doing remediation behind the scenes for quite a while,” he said.
The district does not believe any personal information was stolen.
“There’s certainly been some security audits and procedures that we’ve learned from. We’ve gotten advice from outside help, specialists in law enforcement that have given us some direction,” Saum said. “Overall, I think we were in a really good position but that doesn’t mean we can’t improve and we certainly will.”
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