Cyber risk shuts down Broward school programs

Computer systems down since Monday

A cyber security risk has resulted in many of the Broward schools’ computer systems being shut down since Monday.

The situation left students unable to log in Monday morning. Later that morning, the district’s main learning management software, Canvas, was back on, but numerous other programs were down, including Pinaccle, used for grades and attendance, as well as many databases within the district.

An alert to employees said Pinnacle was scheduled to be back online at noon Wednesday. A program called Virtual Counselor would be back up at noon Saturday and one called BASIS, which hosts a variety of student data, would be up at 10 a.m. Monday.

“In light of recently identified cyber security risks, these systems are currently undergoing urgent maintenance to improve their performance and reliability,” said an alert to employees. “We apologize for any inconvenience.”

The office of Chief Communications Officer Kathy Koch did not respond to repeated requests on Monday and Tuesday seeking information, other than to acknowledge the questions.

Several employees told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that law enforcement is investigating.

“We were told this was a very serious attack,” said one employee familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified because the person wasn’t authorized to speak about it.

The Miami-Dade school district was hit with a cyber attack after school started in early September. A 16-year-old student at South Miami High was arrested in that attack.

That student admitted to orchestrating eight denial of service attacks over a three-day period to overwhelm school district networks, including web-based systems needed for My School Online, which left students and teachers unable to log into their virtual classes, district officials said.

Miami-Dade School Police Department detectives were able to trace one of several IP addresses involved in the attacks back to the student’s home