On Monday, September 9, 2024, Highline Public Schools in the state of Washington was shut down due to a cyberattack. The school distinct announced that it discovered unauthorized activity on its systems and took action to isolate the compromised systems. Currently, this investigation is ongoing.

“Schools and colleges are a favorite target for cyber criminals because of the wide variety of data they maintain on their networks. Individual, personal information on staff, students, governors/school board members and even suppliers can all be very useful as sell-on criminal assets. Add in grades, government data, safeguarding records and emergency contact details and you have a higher than usual variety of leverage vectors for ransomware attacks too.