A cybersecurity attack has been revealed as the cause of a district-wide outage to the New Westminster’s School District’s network.
Local parents reached out to the Record for information about the cause of a network outage impacting schools in New Westminster. They noted the loss of Wi-Fi and internet access had impacted students.
“Parents got an email Monday saying IT is working on it,” said one parent in an email to the Record. “Speaking to my kids, they tell me this has caused school projects being delayed, and now we have an email saying their report cards will be delayed also.”
The Record contacted the school district on Tuesday for information and was initially told New Westminster Schools’ IT staff were working to restore service, and the district would post an update for the community “when the time comes.”
On Wednesday (Dec. 4), the New Westminster School District provided a further statement about the “the outage and cybersecurity incident.”
In a statement to the Record, New Westminster Schools confirmed its information technology team had identified a cybersecurity incident on Tuesday, Nov. 26.
“This incident involved an unknown external party gaining unauthorized access to our systems,” said the statement. “Our team took immediate action by enforcing a district-wide network outage.”
According to SD40, the school district has notified the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner and the New Westminster Police Department about this incident.
“We are still investigating the situation to better understand the extent of the intrusion and have engaged cybersecurity experts to support us,” said the statement. “We take the privacy and the protection of personal information belonging to staff, students, and parents very seriously, and will provide the community with updates about this incident as more information becomes available.”
Sgt. Andrew Leaver of the New Westminster Police Department confirmed it had received a report about a cybersecurity attack.
“At this time, we can’t share other details as this is still under investigation,” he said.
More to come.
