LRSD reports likely data breach

Superintendent notifies employees, paper of investigation

The Little Rock School District is a victim of a “data security incident” that has likely resulted in the unauthorized extraction of some data from district operations, Superintendent Jermall Wright said Thursday.

Wright sent an e-mail message to district employees and to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Thursday about the breach in a network, saying that the district has employed external computer forensic experts to determine the scope of the problem.

“Although the investigation is still ongoing, our forensic partners have determined that some data may have been taken from our network,” Wright said. “At this time, we do not know exactly what data may be at issue, but we are working as quickly as possible to ascertain that information.

“If it is determined that any student, guardian, employee, or vendor information was impacted, we will work with these individuals to provide appropriate resources to protect their personal information,” he also wrote.

Leaders of the 21,000-student capital city district notified law enforcement about the problem and will cooperate with any police inquiries, Wright said. That notice includes submitting an “IC3 report” of suspected internet crime to the FBI.

“We are treating this matter with the highest priority and wanted to inform you of the steps we have taken thus far,” Wright wrote. “Due to the resulting investigation and sensitive nature of the process, we are limited in what details we may share.”

Wright said in the message addressed to his district colleagues that “suspicious activity” in the district’s technology network was initially detected Nov. 11, prompting an immediate response that included moving impacted devices offline.

The district has added monitoring and threat detection software to supplement the security measures already in place and has taken steps to further secure its network.

“We are committed to completing a detailed review of our internal systems and will take everything we learned from the incident to strengthen our network for the future,” school system leaders posted on the district’s website Thursday.

“We will share more information with our stakeholders and our community as we are able to do so,” they added.

The district notified parents earlier this week that network-generated interim grade reports for students, which were supposed to be available on Wednesday, were delayed and no new release date has been set.