Outage at Pembina Trails School Division confirmed as cyber attack

Posted on December 4, 2024 by Peggy

A cyber security incident is confirmed as the reason phones and computers went offline in the Pembina Trails School Division earlier this week.

The division’s information-technology team identified unusual activities in the network Monday morning, leading to the outages.

“Pembina Trails took immediate steps to secure its network, which included making a variety of services unavailable” and bringing in experts to investigate, division CEO Shelley Amos stated in a memo sent out Tuesday evening to update the situation.

“We can confirm this is a cyber security incident,” the memo said, adding the division is now working with a management firm specializing in this type of critical incident.

“We are now in the process of restoring the interrupted services, investigating the incident, and better understanding its impact.”

The system continued to be down as of Tuesday evening but the division had been able to restore phone lines in all but one of it schools, the memo said. It anticipated that last school’s phones would be functioning by the end of Tuesday.

Pembina Trails serves southwest Winnipeg with 36 schools and about 16,000 students.

Schools remain open and classes are continuing during the investigation.

The memo urges people to not open or click on any links they do not recognize, and to be alert for any unusual activities or suspicious content within the division’s network systems.

“Do not reply to any messages that are suspicious or unsolicited. Promptly report them to your immediate supervisor,” the memo states.

“We will continue to provide regular updates on our progress to all members of our Pembina Trails community. “We appreciate your patience. Be assured that resolving this incident is our top priority.”