New Haven Public Schools able to recover from ransomware with comprehensive backups

Exploit: Ransomware
New Haven Public Schools: Public school district serving students in New Haven, Connecticut

Risk to Small Business: 2.333 = Severe: A network vulnerability allowed hackers to install ransomware on the district’s servers, prohibiting access to many of their critical digital assets. Fortunately, New Haven Public Schools maintained comprehensive backups, allowing them to restore functionality without paying the ransom. Many attacks in this realm are self-initiated, with an employee accidentally clicking into a phishing email that installs malware into a system. However, in this case, the district insists that technical vulnerabilities were the culprit.

Individual Risk: No personal information was compromised in the breach.

Customers Impacted: Unknown
How it Could Affect Your Customers’ Business: A holistic ransomware response plan is a mission-critical component of any organization. This plan, which must include everything from attaining the right insurance policy to determining a philosophical position on paying ransom demands, can mitigate the consequences of an attack. In this case, New Haven Public Schools had the backups in place to avoid paying a ransom and to quickly restore operations. Of course, securing IT infrastructure is a complicated process, and partnering with third-party experts can help spot vulnerabilities before the lead to a data breach.

Risk Levels:

1 - 1.5 = Extreme Risk
1.51 - 2.49 = Severe Risk
2.5 - 3 = Moderate Risk

*The risk score is calculated using a formula that considers a wide range of factors related to the assessed breach.