Park Hill superintendent Dr. Jeanette Cowherd updated the board of education about the malware attack that shuttered its schools for two days last week.

The board met Thursday, March 25, with district director of technology Derrick Unruh presenting a report.

He said years of preparations and the board’s investments in the district network security, datacenter equipment and advanced backup systems paid off during the response to the March 21 attack.

Unruh said it was a ransomware attack, with someone encrypting files to try to force the district to pay a ransom. Ransomware likely got into the systems when a student or a staff member clicked on an infected link in an email or website, which compromised their username and password, he said. Because the district had fully secured backups, they recovered the data themselves rather than pursuing paying the ransom.

The investigation found no evidence of data theft. Unruh reported the Secret Service and FBI agents confirmed theft was likely not the intent of the attack.

At a press conference last week, Cowherd apologized for calling off school at the last minute Monday morning.

“I’m so disappointed this happened and truly would not want to ever have to cancel school that late,” Cowherd said. “That’s a horrible thing to do for our families and I cannot say enough good things about my families and our staff and the way they have rallied this morning to support us and to care for us.”

Cowherd said the attack happened in the 4 a.m. hour on Sunday morning. She said by 9 a.m. of that day the district’s technology department began working on the issue.

She said at 4:30 a.m. on Monday morning district leadership met to discuss how to proceed and thought they would be able to have school that day.

Nearly two hours later Cowherd was making the call to cancel school.