Regina Public Schools remain offline, cyber attack confirmed

Cyber security attacks happen every day, and as Regina Public Schools division discovered this week, no one is safe.

Experiencing a hack on May 22, 2022, the board released a statement on Twitter, saying in part:

“As a result of this attack, the school division has taken its systems offline in order to assess the nature and scope of the attack and to ensure that the school division’s systems can be safely brought back online. When the school division noticed the suspicious activity on its systems, it took immediate action, suspending all affected systems and securing them to mitigate any impact to data and operations.”

Message from Regina Public Schools on Thursday, May 26, 2022. pic.twitter.com/SkWLA14Vxo

— Regina Public Schools (@RegPublicSchool) May 26, 2022

In a statement, the Ministry of Education added:

“The Government of Saskatchewan is aware that Regina Public Schools experienced a cybersecurity attack and it is our understanding that the division is taking appropriate steps to get the IT system back online safely with support from cybersecurity professionals, and will investigate the attack appropriately.”

This is not the first cyber attack the province has experienced in a major sector over the past two years. The Health sector and SLGA were both targets, and Cyber Security expert, Brennen Schmidt, said it is because the focus is not where it needs to be.

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“We hear time and time again that budget restraints are top of mind, government is very, very focused on economic recovery, and unfortunately these kinds of scenarios put a full stop to that kind of recovery,” said Schmidt.

“Saskatchewan’s economic future is going to be dependant on how we shore up defences and invest strategically so we don’t have bad actors continuing to do this,” he added.

At this time, the Regina Public Schools division could not confirm the depths of the breach, nor what information was leaked.

The Twitter post says they will continue to update the public via Facebook and Twitter, while emails and school portals remain offline.

Parents are asked to call into schools for any student service needs.