Toronto: The Durham District School Board said that they have faced a cyber attack, due to which the telephone and email service was completely stopped. Due to this, authorities disabled online learning for the immediate future.
The school board said it first came to know about the cyber attack on Friday. The board said the IT teams were engaged in restoring the entire weekend services. The school board did not release much details about nature of the cyber attack.
In a statement issued on Sunday evening, the board said, “As soon as we learned of this attack, we took immediate steps to secure our network and sought the immediate help of experts.” We have also informed the law enforcement about this and we are trying to understand the impact of this incident.
The board said that schools are going to open from Monday for in-person learning, all phone and email services will remain offline. The board appealed to parents to send a temporary emergency contact number with their child.
It was also said that the attendance of the children will be taken by the teachers themselves and hence it will not be possible to contact the parents/guardians of the absent children.
The board also said that most of the children’s Chromebrooks will not work and @Home classes and literacy tests have been canceled.