Network shut down at Bonneville School District 93 following cyberattack

IDAHO FALLS — A cybersecurity attack on Thursday has prompted officials at Bonneville Joint School District 93 to shut down its network.

Although it’s a precautionary measure, it’s causing delays to its summer school programs.

District 93’s Superintendent Scoot G. Woolstenhulme told EastIdahoNews.com no data was taken or lost during the attack.

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Over the past few weeks, the district has been working with a cybersecurity company called Arctic Wolf to monitor its networks and systems.

The cybersecurity company notified school officials of the incursion on Thursday. Woolstenhulme said the network was taken down that same day.

“Because of their quick action on that, it prevented them from exfiltrating any data from our systems, so we didn’t have any compromised data,” Woolstenhulme said.

The cybersecurity company is working on filing a report with the FBI.

Meanwhile, until it’s determined that the network is secure, the district is not turning on its network. The shutdown is negatively impacting three summer school programs.

The first is a special education summer school, which Woolstenhulme said doesn’t depend on the network. It offers in-person instruction, but may affect the teachers who need internet access.

The second is for those in Lincoln High School, which was in the last week of its summer block. The district decided to issue a passing grade to students who have completed more than 65% of the class.

The last group consists of those taking online summer classes, which range from those making up school credit to taking dual-credit classes.

Aside from an incursion into the Power School network earlier this year, Woolstenhulme says there hasn’t been an attack like this in recent history.

Woolstenhulme said that having a security team, along with the district’s IT team, ensured that the attack was quickly stopped and no information was compromised.

“This pretty severely impacted that because it’s fully dependent on our network, for kids to access their classwork, for their teachers,” Woolstenhulme said. “The whole thing depends on the network. So that’s basically on a two-week hiatus until we get everything back up and running.”

Parents and staff were notified of the attack Monday morning. Schools with summer programs have started communicating with student and families about it.

Parents with additional questions can send them to D93.org/askD93.