Rochester School District Update on ‘Cybersecurity Incident’

Get our free mobile app

Rochester, MN (KROC-AM News) - The Rochester School District offered an update this afternoon that sheds some light on how devastating a presumed cyber attack has been for the public school system.

School District officials say they have successfully restored several systems, including the phone system that was shut down after what was termed "irregular activity" was detected on the district's network late last week. It was also reported that the cooling and heating systems and district buildings have been manually overridden and are now accurate. Copiers and school buildings are also now working and hotspots have been distributed to all school site offices.

“Thank you for your continued flexibility, patience, and creativity during this past week. We are making significant progress in getting our systems back up and running, with more to do. As the investigation into this cybersecurity incident continues, we will provide more information, including a timeline, as it becomes available.”

District staff is being instructed to report to the Mayo High School Media Center from 8 AM through noon tomorrow to reset their passwords with district Technology Department staff. The employees are asked to bring their school district devices and badges. Once the staff password reset process is completed, the Technology Department staff plans to begin working with student devices.

The "cyber security incident" has forced the cancellation of ACT testing that had been scheduled for tomorrow. The Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments testing that was scheduled to begin this week has been postponed until further notice.

Students and staff in the Rochester Public Schools return to classes on Tuesday using a variety of non-high-tech teaching and learning strategies. At this point, it's still not clear when they will be able to resume using their iPads and other networked devices.