Pembina Trails staff bank information, SINs may have been accessed in cyberattack: memo

Posted on December 19, 2024 by Peggy

Pembina Trails School Division is warning students and staff their personal information, including payroll information for staff, may have been accessed during a cyberattack earlier this month.

The southwest Winnipeg school division previously said its information technology team identified “unusual activity” in its network system, resulting in phone and computer outages, on Dec. 2, and it began an investigation.

A Thursday email statement from Pembina Trails said it has learned personal information was “either accessed or could have been accessed” by an unauthorized third party in the incident.

A separate memo, sent to staff on Thursday and obtained by CBC News, said a database containing payroll information may have been among the information accessed in the days leading up to Dec. 2.

The memo, signed by superintendent Shelley Amos, said that database includes bank account and compensation information, along with social insurance numbers, names, birthdates, addresses and phone numbers.

“We have no evidence that the contents of the database were actually accessed,” the memo reads, but it said the school division is notifying staff and offering a 36-month credit monitoring service to staff whose information was in the database out of an abundance of caution.

The division is recommending its employees enrol in the credit monitoring service.

It’s also recommending anyone who attended a Pembina Trails school as a student since 2014, or staff who worked there since 2009, visit a website it has set up for further details about the incident, which it says will be posted within the next 24 hours.

Pembina Trails School Division said it is working with third-party cybersecurity professionals and gradually restoring school functions.

It has notified law enforcement and the Manitoba Ombudsman, Amos’s memo said.

The division deeply regrets the incident, the memo said, and finds it “appalling that an organization dedicated to the education and safety of children should be the focus of this kind of criminal activity.”

CBC News reached out to the school division’s board, which declined to comment beyond its statement.

Pembina Trails has 36 schools, with more than 17,000 students and almost 2,500 full- and part-time staff, the division says.