Georgia School District Goes Offline After Suspicious Activity
(TNS) — Henry County Schools Superintendent Mary Elizabeth Davis said Tuesday leaders continue to investigate “suspicious activity” that has resulted in the district restricting Internet access since last week.
In a video posted to YouTube, Davis did not say what activity led the south metro Atlanta district to decide to take its Internet offline on Thursday, but said that student services, payroll, billing and other district operations remain functional as the school system conducts a probe of its network.
“What we know now is that last week suspicious activity was detected on our network,” she said. “And as you would expect, we take matters of this nature very seriously.”
The district’s investigators are being joined by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Georgia Emergency Management Agency, Henry County Police Department and others in its probe, Davis said.
Henry Schools said late last week that district operations ”will continue for students with the exception of online courses.” In addition, leaders said lunches, bus services and after-school activities would “continue as normal.” The livestream of the Henry school board’s Monday meeting was canceled because of the district’s restricted Internet functions.
Davis did not say when Internet functionality would return to the system or when the district might have answers in the investigation, including defining the “suspicious activity.”
She did, however, seek to find a bright side to the challenges.
“It really has been amazing to see the agility of our organization kick in,” she said. “As always, the Henry County team of professionals, our students and our parents have responded with amazing adaptability as we keep school operations going, maintain student learning and maintain functionality of our core business applications.”
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