Expert weighs in on PPSD network security breach

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WLNE) — The Providence Public School Department (PPSD) announced it had seen irregular activity on its network earlier this month, shutting things down and working to investigate the problem.

Today, Providence School Board President Erlin Rogel announced the district is facing a network security breach.

Rogel says the school board will hold a closed meeting Tuesday night to discuss how the breach occurred, what steps are being taken to resolve it, and how the district is supporting families.

“Unlike someone breaking a window, there’s lots of ways to be untraceable or very difficult to detect on the cyber realm,” said Jason Harlam of Technology Advisory Group.

“It’s often easy to target institutions like schools, like hospitals, towns, police departments, that really need and rely on their technology and there’s a very low tolerance for not being able to work properly.”

Over the past few years, there’s been a significant uptick in cyber attacks against school districts, including ransomware attacks.

“Ransomware is one of many types of cyber attacks that’s been happening around the world and around the country. And it gets a lot of news attention even though it’s not the most common that we see, it is often very disruptive and targets institutions intentionally that feel that disruption and feel a need to ultimately pay a ransom,” said Harlam.

According to a spokesperson from PPSD, the services impacted remain offline, and the district contacted the FBI, state police, and the Department of Homeland Security.

Providence Public Schools provided an update, saying in a statement:

The analysis is currently underway to gather more information but initial findings did not show evidence that district data was compromised. The statement also says that student and staff information is on a separate server from the network. Providence public schools serves around twenty thousand students, and while the district says it’s working as quickly as possible to address the issue, there is no timeline on when things are expected to be resolved.