The Mobile County School District in Alabama. Guthrie Public Schools in Oklahoma. Pennsylvania鈥檚 Wyoming Area School District.
What do they all have in common? They are among the 500 schools that have been victimized by ransomware so far this year, according to a from the Armor Threat Intelligence Briefing. What鈥檚 more, 15 districts were hit in the last two weeks of September, just as the new school year was rolling out.
That鈥檚 a big uptick from 2018, . K-12 schools experienced 119 cyber incidents in 2018 and only about 10 percent involved ransomware.
Ransomware, in which hackers seize a school鈥檚 data and may demand money for releasing it, can lead to major interruptions for schools.
Case-in-point: Over the summer, two school districts on New York鈥檚 Long Island鈥擱ockville Center and Mineola鈥攚ere held hostage. 鈥攎ore than many teachers鈥� annual salaries鈥攖o release the data. Mineola had a back-up server that wasn鈥檛 compromised by the attack.
Connecticut had seven school districts that were the victims of ransomware attacks so far this year. That translates to 104 individual schools, the most of any state, the report found. And at least two school districts&mdah;Monroe-Woodbury in Central Valley, N.Y. and the Flagstaff Unified School District鈥攄elayed the start of the school year because of ransomware attacks, the report found.
What鈥檚 more, in July, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards due to ransomware and malware attacks against several local schools. That step made state resources available to districts, including the Louisiana National Guard, the state police, and the state鈥檚 office of technology services.
And last month, the U.S. Senate passed the 鈥溾�� , which would authorize the Department of Homeland Security to help state and local governments, and school districts respond to cyber threats and restore infrastructure after an attack. Similar legislation has already passed the U.S. House of Representatives.