That’s what Brad Reichert, executive director of technology and district services at Lake Fenton Community Schools, told the Lake Fenton Board of Education during the Monday, Jan. 9 meeting. 

 “Hillsdale and Jackson County, just before Christmas, lost three days of school. Both counties were entirely down for three days because of ransomware attacks,” he said. 

 These attacks impacted 22 school districts from Nov. 14 to Nov. 16, 2022. Ransomware is “a type of malicious attack where attackers encrypt an organization’s data and demand payment to restore access,” according to the Computer Security Resource Center (CSRC). 

 Lake Fenton has also experienced a small scale ransomware attack five years ago in which the attackers locked job description and other files. 

 “We had somebody click on something in an email and all the files they had access to were locked. Unfortunately, they were not proud of what had happened, so they didn’t share it. By the time they did and I realized it, our backups didn’t go back far enough.”

 Reichert is working to ensure this doesn’t happen again at Lake Fenton. Superintendent Julie Williams said Reichert has been at the forefront of making sure that the district’s systems are protected.

 Ransomware attacks impact school districts in numerous ways, including lost days of school, lost data, hours of restoration and recreation, insurance costs, contractor costs and public relations concerns. 

 “Once you’ve been a victim, you’re known to be a victim and they’re going to come get you again and again until you fix your problems. So that’s a real scary one,” he said. 

 The school has implemented numerous safety precautions to prevent these attacks. One precaution is using multi-factor authentication (MFA), which requires users to provide two or more verification factors to gain access to a system. Often these systems will require a username and password as well as a pin from a phone app.

 “That is the single most important thing that we do to make…