Hi Hayley.
I totally get the swamped reference. :-\
Our tabletop drill was written as a meeting of the leadership of all major departments, a walkthrough of potential breaches, a discussion of how each could impact the school practically and impressionably, and then how each breach could/should be addressed within and outside the school. As you probably know, most breaches are a result of user error, so while we had multiple layers of security and an education system in place, it's not a matter of if, but when a breach will occur. This was the message I conveyed.
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Jennifer Lamkins, Ed.D.
Coordinator of Member and Technology Support Services
she/her
Northwest Association of Independent Schools
5001 California Ave. SW (Ste. 112), Seattle, WA 98136
Office: 206-323-6137
Direct: 206-323-7005
jlamkins@nwais.org------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 03-24-2022 12:17 PM
From: Hayley Gunther
Subject: In the aftermath of Finalsite ransomware attack
I have been so swamped I have not had time to really spend looking at discussion posts. Yours really resonated with me. Not the rough start to the new year, but the Finalsite ransomware attack definitely had my attention.
I would be interested in hearing what your tabletop exercise involved. My very real exercise for the Log4Shell vulnerability involved identifying any database that might have any of our student, staff, parent, donor PII in it and contacting them to find out if they were patched. Fortunately many were and I now have a far more comprehensive list than I had 4 months ago. So when our website went down in January it just felt like one more kick in the teeth. We did not have a solution, I know our admissions team spent a lot of time doing email and calling families. Finalasite was pretty good about giving us updates about what was coming back online and when. We then scrambled to test the pages to ascertain the links were all still valid.
I know this is months past the incident, but my world is almost never quiet.
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Hayley Gunther
Educational Technologist
Academy of the New Church Secondary Schools
Original Message:
Sent: 01-18-2022 03:46 PM
From: Jennifer Lamkins
Subject: In the aftermath of Finalsite ransomware attack
FYI: I am re-posting this from our NWAIS discussion board.
Hello all.
Hope you had restive holidays. Here at the Lamkins-Ratliff household it's been an adventurous start to the new year with 6-8 inches of snow in 24 hours, power outages, blown furnace motors, a COVID scare, and a fall on the ice (not me) necessitating a visit to urgent care and eventually surgery. Happy New Year? What can you do except respond with ease and grace? The snow is gone, the power is steady, the furnace is fixed, negative COVID tests all around and remote work available to rest my partner's knee...the 2022 Mile Challenge will fall on me to complete until she is back on her feet....70 miles and counting.
I noticed many school websites were down and key communication tools knocked out as a result of the ransomware attack on Finalsite almost 2 weeks ago. I hope you all were able to get back up and running sooner than later.
I thought this might be good time to open up a discussion to share what you all did/do in such instances or what your plans involve to prep for something like this. Have they changed as a result of this attack. I know as a tech director, I had many discussion with my peeps and developed a tabletop drill for the school leadership team. What do you all do in terms of vendors and data protection? How do you communicate issues such as these to your community?
Look forward to hearing from you.
Jen
#Leadership #CybersafetyandDataSecurity
#Leadership
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Jennifer Lamkins, Ed.D.
Coordinator of Member and Technology Support Services
she/her
Northwest Association of Independent Schools
5001 California Ave. SW (Ste. 112), Seattle, WA 98136
Office: 206-323-6137
Direct: 206-323-7005
jlamkins@nwais.org
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