PELL CITY, Ala. (WBRC) – The Pell City School System learned that some of its technology systems were affected by what School Superintendent Justin Burns is calling a “security incident.”
Burns sent school families a letter saying the student information system was not affected and that a third party copied some files.
Cyber expert Joseph Brunsman of the Brunsman Advisory Group says when it comes to cybercriminals, all they need is one opportunity to disrupt your life.
“They’re gonna go in and they’re gonna steal this data. Now they’re gonna say ‘hey, if you don’t pay us to get this data back, we’re gonna release this data online,’” said Brunsman.
In his letter to Pell City schools families, Burns says the school system will not be paying the cybercriminals; something Brunsman says can be tricky.
“If they’re saying ‘hey, this didn’t impact like the student system.’ Well, maybe it impacts former students or maybe it impacts faculty and staff. So, now it’s going to cost them even more money to try and void that data actually being pushed out to the world at large,” said Brunsman.
With no indication that any student information has been used as a result of the breach, the school system says they’re working hard to resolve the incident and restore their service.
WBRC reached out to the Pell City School System for an updated comment about the security incident but did not hear back. WBRC will continue to update this story as more information becomes available.
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