The school servers were among a global list of 70,000 other servers.
Working with partner organisations and school service providers, including Network for Learning (N4L), we have notified all affected schools to alert them to the issue. We are providing ongoing advice and support to the schools on how they can remedy the situation and ensure affected servers are made safe, as well as recover data from backups where necessary.
The website selling the server details has now been shut down.
Our immediate focus is on ensuring affected school servers are made secure and that schools have adequate protection in place. Once the current situation is resolved, we will be looking into how and why the servers became at risk and what information we can use to help schools improve their security in the future. We are also asking schools to contact us if they have been the victim of a cyber attack.
We provide information to all schools around digital citizenship and cyber-safety through the Enabling e-Learning website as well as our online digital technology guide . We also fund NetSafe to actively support schools with online safety advice and guidance on cyber security, along with a range of specialist organisations that can offer specialist ICT safety and security tools to schools.
Whilst the protective measures being taken by schools to keep their data secure are highly effective, global cyber attackers are constantly finding new ways to work around these measures. We are constantly working with partner organisations to do our best to support schools to stay ahead of these new and emerging cyber threats, including advice on how they can ensure their internal servers are well-protected.
If you have any concerns about cyber security we recommend you speak with NetSafe for further help, advice and guidance.