Pueblo County School District 70 disclosed ransomware breach of student records

Pueblo County School District 70 in Colorado told its community on July 17, 2024 that a ransomware attack had potentially compromised personal information belonging to current and former students and staff. The district said the original attack most likely occurred on April 27, 2024 and was discovered on May 17.

Records held on the affected server included student files covering 1991 through 2006 and staff records running from an undetermined date to the present. District officials described the number of people with data on that server as small but said they could not rule out exposure. No misuse of the information had been observed at the time of the announcement.

The district took the server offline, engaged cybersecurity experts and worked with federal investigators on the response. Superintendent Ronda Rein acknowledged the two-month gap between discovery in May and public notification in July. Remediation steps included enabling two-step authentication on staff accounts, moving critical information off local servers to cloud-based servers, and hiring a full-time staff member responsible for cybersecurity.

District 70 advised current and former students and employees to monitor their credit reports, consider credit freezes or fraud alerts, and stay alert to phishing attempts, and published a phone line for people with questions. As of late July 2024 the investigation was continuing and the district had not stated how many individuals were affected.