Alabama State Department of Education making progress in data breach investigation

The Alabama State Department of Education said it is making progress in investigating a major data security incident it suffered last month.

 

In a recent press conference, Alabama’s State Superintendent of Education Eric Mackey said that on June 17, the department’s IT team detected suspicious activity in its internal network. The team took immediate steps to secure the affected systems, and stopped the “attempted cyber attack” in the process.

 

The department has launched an investigation, with assistance from external cyber security experts, to determine how the threat actors infiltrated the systems and the nature of the data accessed by them.

 

Mackey added that the department’s systems are now up and running. However, it had to take the website offline to make some adjustments after the data security incident. At the time of writing, the Alabama State Department of Education’s website was still offline.

 

A Department spokesperson added that the threat actors who infiltrated its network were able to access some data and disrupt certain services. The department’s IT team is trying to use data backups to run its systems.

 

In another press conference, State Superintendent Mackey said that the department is getting “more and more reports” every day about the data security incident.

 

“So, we think that even as we build stronger walls to keep them out, we feel really good about where we are now, but we know that in time, they will also build stronger hacks. And so, it’s a continuing cycle. Unfortunately, we in public service are seeing it,” he said.

 

Mackey added that the data security incident did not impact retirees’ accounts or job application details of residents.

 

The state education department has notified state and federal law enforcement authorities, the Alabama Attorney General and the state’s Office of Information Technology and is working with them to resolve the issue. It previously announced that the data security incident likely compromised both student and employee data, including some personally identifiable information.