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Camp Verde Unified School District Hit With Ransomware Attack

Camp Verde Unified School District Hit With Ransomware Attack
  • The attackers demanded a ransom payment in bitcoin to unlock the affected computer systems.
  • The ransomware attack was discovered on July 19.

What happened?

Camp Verde Unified School District (CVUSD) in Arizona was hit with a ransomware attack at the start of the new school year. The attack was initially discovered on July 19 when the staff members booted up their computers.

CVUSD has become one of the many schools across the country which have been impacted by cyberattacks in recent times. Earlier on July 26, the governor of Louisiana declared a state of emergency after three school districts were hit by cyberattacks.

What was the impact?

Due to the locked systems, the staff faced difficulties in conducting their operations for the new school year which started on August 5. The processing for the new students and the new school year was impacted due to the incident.

According to the school principal, the business office of the school was the most impacted unit. Several administrative tasks such as payroll, and student enrollment, faced delays or had to be done manually. The staff worked rapidly to allow the computer lab to become functional again for conducting regular classes.

“For every day that our computers aren’t up in the business office, we’re just getting further and further behind in terms of paying bills. We’re doing checks and stuff by hand. People still have to get paid,” said school prinicipal Danny Howe, JournalAZ reported.

What was the response?

The school district had an existing cybersecurity insurance which will help it recover the systems and improve its security systems to prevent any future incidents.

"Camp Verde Middle School principal and district administrator-in-charge Danny Howe said he was 'cautiously optimistic' about the efforts to retrieve the data and get out of this mostly unscathed after more than two weeks," noted JournalAZ.

Fortunately, the school district did not need to postpone its opening day for the new school year despite the ongoing crisis.

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