Securing the Uncertain
By Andrew D. Johnson
Superintendent
Effingham School District #40
From a routine school day to a battle against cyber threats, insides a district’s race to recover from a ransomeware attack.
When the wind blows, the thunder booms and the lightning strikes, you naturally know what is going on outside your house or your school. Imagine the phone rings the next morning and your district phone lines are down. Your security system is down. Your computers are not working properly. You start to realize this might not be a normal weather event. On February 9, 2023 we woke up thinking it would be a regular school day but before we knew, it was all hands on deck. We thought our computers were down due to the weather. We QUICKLY realized that the storms were not our problem. We had much bigger issues to deal with…a potential ransomware attack.