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Keystone Central board hears parents' concerns after student email shutdown in cyber incident
Summary
A parent raised questions about a cybersecurity incident that temporarily disabled student email accounts; district officials said no student data is believed lost and that student emails were shut down to contain the attack while the district investigates.
Danielle, a community member, asked the Keystone Central School District board on July 17 who was affected by a cybersecurity incident and why parents were not fully notified. “I have concerns about a cybersecurity incident that I received an email about this week. The email stated that students' emails have been disabled. I've asked around, and parents don't seem to be aware of the incident. Who was impacted by this incident, and what information was compromised, and why weren't all parents contacted?” she said.
Dr. Redmond, the district superintendent, said the district has not identified any loss of student information and described immediate steps taken to limit further impact. “To our knowledge, we haven't, lost anything. There weren't any student information that was lost or anything like that,” he said. He and other administrators said staff and student email accounts were temporarily deactivated to reduce incoming malicious traffic while the district investigated.
Jeremy, an information-technology staff member, said the district notified parents and staff by email in the middle of the day and that officials decided not to issue a phone call because it was not classified as an emergency that endangered physical safety. “The timing of the initial announcement that went out to parents and students was middle of the day, so we did not send out a phone call to parents, as it wasn't an emergency that, you know, affected anybody's life or didn't put anybody in danger. So we decided to send it out as an email to all parents and contacts of students at the time,” he said. Jeremy added the district was “reducing and containing any potential further impacts at this time.”
Board members and the superintendent said they would follow up on why some parents reported not receiving the district email and that they were restoring accounts after verification. No formal action or vote was taken at the meeting on the incident; the board heard the report and directed staff to continue the investigation and to review communications procedures.
The board encouraged anyone with personal complaints about an employee to contact the superintendent directly, per district policy on public comment.
