Today was the start of Algonquin Regional High School’s midterms. That was complicated by an internet outage that the administration announced was caused by an attack.
A message from the Principal asks anyone to share what they know about the action he points out was a federal crime.
The following message was sent to Algonquin families by Principal Sean Bevan:
Today, before the start of the first exam, we experienced an internet outage that disabled, in the least, our staff internet. The outage was the result of a cyberattack type that overwhelms or slows down our internet.
I recognize that stable, uninterrupted internet access is a basic necessity for our staff to deliver high quality instruction and for our students to engage in challenging work. Today’s experience was very frustrating for us all. And, we deployed IT staff from across the district to support our teachers and students in response to the attack. Additionally, our IT staff is working with a third-party from outside our school to prevent future attacks with the short-term goal of ensuring that exams are not adversely impacted tomorrow or for the rest of the week.
Today’s attack is a federal crime, and we have reported it to the Commonwealth Fusion Center, an agency that works with federal, State, and local authorities to investigate cyber crimes. Our investigation into this incident is ongoing. If you or your child are aware of who may be responsible for this or past attacks, please let me know. Any information you have would be most helpful and could improve the school experience for our students.
We will be rebooting our network at 1:00 pm to restore a baseline of connectivity that should be an improvement. The internet will be down for at least ten minutes at that time.
