Haywood County Schools will be closed for instruction on Wednesday, August 26, 2020 due to a Ransomware attack. It is a Workday. The first half of the day is mandatory and the second half of the day is optional. The mandatory morning session is needed for teachers and other staff to assist with screening for corrupt computers.
The school system is providing principals with directions for teachers and other staff members to check their school issued devices to determine if they were impacted by the ransomware attack. Teachers, we need your on-site assistance with this process to expedite our return to remote learning. Please plan to help us with this process unless you were previously given an exemption to work remotely.
This afternoon we restored telephone service to the Central Office. We are in the process of restoring telephone service at the schools and other school system facilities beginning with the high schools. While the forensic work is still ongoing, we are cautiously optimistic regarding the scope and nature of the ransomware attack.
Again, we thank our IT Department for reacting quickly yesterday morning. The assistance from deployed members of the Microelectronic Center of North Carolina (MCNC), NCLGISA Strike Team and National Guard has been nothing short of outstanding. We cannot thank you enough for your assistance.
We have another 10:00 a.m. multiagency meeting planned for Wednesday. In an effort to keep everyone in-the-loop, we are resharing the following information
- Our financial and payroll information was not impacted. We anticipate being able to pay our employees on time. Please bear with us if there are glitches. Members of the Finance Department are working from a remote location because our normal Internet and server support is missing. With that said, we expect the end-of-month payroll to occur as scheduled. We will not be able to put paystubs on the employee portal at this time.
- Our third-party data storage was not impacted. PowerSchool (student data), Orbit, Google email, other Google applications, Remind, and any other third-party data is secure.
- Chromebooks were not individually impacted. However, Chromebooks cannot be used at this time because they automatically connect to the network and the network is down.
- Staff computers are not safe to use at this time.
- Personal computers (not associated with Haywood County Schools) were not impacted.
- Google email can be used from a personal device.
Our Next steps:
- We are bringing on-site communication tools online beginning with telephones.
- We are working to reconnect student devices to the network for instructional purposes.
- We are working to determine the status of staff computers and remedy as appropriate.
- We are sharing appropriate information with the FBI.
Our delay in restarting remote instruction is the uncertainty about the use of staff computers. We will know more when the forensic work is complete and teachers help use with screening tomorrow.
Thank you for bearing with us we work to restore communication and other school system services.
Contact: Dr. Bill Nolte, Superintendent