Hardenhuish School in Wiltshire disrupted by a ransomware attack

Hardenhuish School, a secondary school in Chippenham, Wiltshire, confirmed in late April 2023 that it had been hit by a ransomware attack affecting its IT network. Attackers gained access to school systems and demanded payment in return for restored access.

The disruption spread across much of the school's technology. Reporting at the time listed the school website, a local server, internet access, WiFi, printers and the internal telephone system among the services knocked out. With systems down, staff reverted to paper registers to record attendance.

A school spokesperson said pupils' learning was the absolute focus and that contingency plans had been implemented swiftly with staff to keep disruption to a minimum while systems were brought back online. The school appointed a team of third-party IT specialists to restore systems safely and investigate the incident, and it notified parents of its roughly 1,600 pupils by text message.

The BBC reported that there was no indication Hardenhuish had suffered data loss on the scale of separate January 2023 attacks on UK schools and universities, in which confidential documents from 14 schools were leaked online. It was not disclosed whether the school paid, and the size of the ransom demand was not made public.