BROCKVILLE – For more than a week, the Upper Canada District School Board’s internet services have been disrupted due to a cyber attack.
That attack, which began around January 5 however, is not related to a larger US-based software data breach affecting hundreds of schools in Canada and the United States.
As of January 13, internet access remains unavailable for the UCDSB’s 77 schools and more than 28,000 students.
Last week, the Toronto Star and other outlets began reporting an extensive cyber attack and data breach at cloud-based software provider PowerSchool Inc. PowerSchool provides data management services for school student records, student medical assessments, grades, human resources, teacher training, employee records management, among other services. Millions of student and employee records were accessed illegally through the data breach.
Schools and school boards in six provinces have been impacted by the breach. However the UCDSB internet issue is not related to the PowerSchool breach.
In a statement to The Leader, Executive Superintendent of Business Jeremy Hobbs confirmed that board’s incident is not related.
“Our incident appears to be separate from the one PowerSchool is experiencing,” he said. “We understand that other organizations across Ontario and the United States have been impacted by an incident involving the software provider PowerSchool. At this time, we have not received notice from PowerSchool to indicate that we are impacted by their breach.”
He added that the board continues work to restore access to their internet network.
“We’ve been working closely with cybersecurity experts in the recovery efforts and will continue to do so for as long as necessary,” Hobbs explained. “While our schools are open and some key services are beginning to come back online, it is not business as usual across our system.”
The board-wide outage blocked access to Microsoft-related tools used for teaching, as well as online-class access for e-Learning courses when at school. Even shared file storage and the school board’s email system has been down for over a week.
The board did not clarify what type of cyber attack knocked out internet services.