Schools in Hartford, Connecticut, have been delayed from reopening following a ransomware attack that shut down critical information technology systems.

Details of the attack are a little vague. Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said the attack started on Thursday and then on Saturday as well, with the outage described as “the most extensive and significant attack in the last five years in the city.” The ransomware didn’t affect student learning platforms but a different system that relates to some students attending in-person learning, including transportation routes.

The school system said most of the systems were restored by Monday night and Mayor Bronin credited that to the city spending $500,000 last year on “cybersecurity improvements.” Reading between the lines, it would appear that the Hartford school system had system backups that it used to restore systems.

Some 18,000 students have been affected by the delay and a new start date for schools wasn’t yet being announced.

According to NBC, Hartford schools were not alone. Schools across the U.S. ran into “computer glitches” on Tuesday, the start of the new school year for many. Online learning platform Blackboard is said to have suffered issues, while in Houston a web hosting service that catered to some 209,000 students crashed, preventing the students from logging in.

Across the Atlantic, Newcastle University in the U.K. also suffered a ransomware attack, with those behind the attack stealing student data and threatening to release the stolen data if a payment was not made.

“The start of the 2020-2021 school year, with millions of students across the U.S. resuming in-person and virtual learning, has just begun and already we have witnessed an immediate increase in cybersecurity attacks in the education sector,” Mike Riemer, field chief technology officer at secure access solutions provider Pulse Secure LLC, told SiliconANGLE. “The recent attacks occurring to the Hartford Public Schools and Newcastle University prove the education sector remains a lucrative target for cybercriminals and the industry as a whole must consider more progressive security controls as institutions, parents and students adapt to virtual learning.”

Sanjay Jagad, senior director of products and solutions at data storage firm Cloudian Inc., said municipalities and educational facilities need to employ data protection where it resides — at the storage layer — to safeguard data.

Photo: John Phelan/Wikimedia Commons