Crown Point students return to classes following network outage

Classes will resume for Crown Point students Tuesday as officials continue to fully restore a network outage first detected last week.

The outage prompted the cancellation of school Monday as officials suspected their network was compromised and brought in a cybersecurity firm to investigate and work with the district’s technology team to restore service.

In a Monday letter, Superintendent Todd Terrill said students will be able to use their Chromebooks

and he advised they should be charged before school.

He said despite posts on social media, Chromebooks were not impacted by the recent network outage, and internal safety controls are in place on the Chromebooks.

He said no personal devices should be used on the district Wi-Fi. Students must use their district-issued Chromebook.

Web-based tools, along with the new ClearTouch panels, will be available for use.

Teachers will have back up lesson plans that do not involve technology.

Phones are working at each school for outgoing and incoming calls, but voicemail is not available yet. Email is not restored yet, so parents should communicate with their child’s school via phone. Parents and teachers can also use communication apps like ParentSquare, Remind, and Class Dojo.

Breakfast and lunch service will continue as usual, although cafeteria workers may have to manually record lunches this week.

Security systems are working, and secure entrance procedures

have not changed.

Officials have not said whether personal information was accessed. They said in a Sunday letter that when there’s a determination from the cybersecurity firm, the results will be shared with staff and families.

A year ago, the Duneland School Corp. in Chesterton experienced a computer system hack that exposed personal employee data including Social Security numbers, birth dates and insurance plan information.

The hack involved current and former employees and their beneficiaries and dependents.

An investigation determined an unauthorized person obtained access to Duneland’s computer systems between Oct. 21 and Oct. 27, 2021.

The district contacted police and hired a cybersecurity firm to address the incident and restore operations.

It also implemented additional safeguards and technical security measures, including multi-factor authentication for all user accounts, to further protect data maintained.