Editorial: Van Buren Public Schools cleaning up after cyber-attack

School Supt. Pete Kudlak told those at the Jan. 29 school board meeting that the district is cleaning up on the last details of December’s cyber-attack. He assured everyone that the student information is secure.
Supt. Kudlak told the Independent the district paid no ransom. He said they were able to “rebuild everything that was knocked down.”
He said he sent a message to families on the cyber-attack. He said they have closed all the investigative pieces and have a third-party company to mine the data. They have to see if any personal data has been compromised and that should be done in the next week or so.
He said he hasn’t heard of anything being compromised. The hacker has the employee numbers, which are not Social Security Numbers, he said, so it isn’t a problem.
In information sent to the Independent from a local resident about Van Buren’s attack, it noted in 2022, 89 cyber-attacks were directed toward K-12 and post-secondary schools in the U.S. and this number doubled to 180 in the year 2023.
The details of the Van Buren Schools’ data breach were published on the dark web leak portal of the Akira ransomware group on Jan. 8. It claimed to possess the “juiciest information” about students and their parents, HR information, accounting, and other files.