The Manor Independent School District is out $2.3 million after falling to an apparent phishing scam.
Officials for the Texas school district claim that three separate fraudulent transactions took place in November 2019 following the phishing attack. The scammers carried out the attacks using a variety of tactics, including disguised email addresses, phone numbers, fake links, and more.
The school district took to Facebook on January 10 to post that the incident was caused by a phishing email.
Texas authorities and the FBI are currently investigating the matter and have not revealed too much information on the attack, except that they have "strong leads" for this case.
This news comes as school districts across the United States battle against the growing threat of ransomware. New research revealed that 72 districts had been impacted in 2019, impacting roughly 1,039 schools nationwide.
In July 2019, Louisiana Governor John Del Edwards was forced to declare a statewide emergency after a ransomware attack struck three public school districts in Northern Louisiana. Officials were forced to push back the first day of school for students as a result of the attack.
To combat today's pervasive ransomware attacks, NNT suggests implementing system hardening templates from the Center for Internet Security (CIS) - CIS Benchmarks. These are based on security best practices and can be leveraged to ensure that all IT systems retain the most appropriate checks designed to harden and protect your environment from ransomware. NNT also provides custom Ransomware Mitigation Kits to help automatically identify and fix weaknesses in your IT environment.
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