COLORADO SPRINGS — A district-wide internet and phone service outage prompted a two-hour delay for students in Academy District 20 on Thursday.
On Friday the school district announced that the school relaunched a safe network allowing for phone and internet systems to be restored.
When it comes to the issue of data security, according to the district's Information Technology team at this time there is no indication that student, staff, or family data has been leaked or accessed.
However, the school district said it is working with an independent third party to investigate the matter. Should there be new findings as a result of that investigation the school district will follow up with further communication and steps.
The school district did ask staff and students to do the following before Monday:
- Before Monday, please restart your device while on the D20 network.
- Devices can be used on the network starting today, including for students. Please note that GlobalProtect may not be fully functional until Monday, meaning access to certain resources may not be possible until that time.
- Upon returning to school on Monday, students and staff should contact their school’s District Technology Technician (DTT) to help troubleshoot any technology concerns.
ORIGINAL COVERAGE
The district was responding to a possible cybersecurity threat, according to its website. Officials said they will not reconnect to the internet until they can rebuild the firewall network.
D20 said schools will be on a normal bell schedule on Friday 4/26, but the internet was not expected to reconnect until later in the day.
"We actually decided not to send any of our kids to school [Thursday]," said Angelica Gilver-Viers, a D20 mom of four.
Gilver-Viers said her kids' schools gave her a phone number to call, but only for emergencies.
"One phone for hundreds of families is not adequate and I just did not feel that their safety was really taken into consideration," said Gilver-Viers.
At this time, the school district isn't saying whether any students, families or staff have their information compromised.
"That's a real concern, unfortunately, but like is it the system that has all our children's social security numbers, our hours, our addresses, and phone numbers," said Gilver-Viers.
The district explained its firewall network provider is experiencing issues nationwide on its website. "Over the past 24 hours, the IT team, in conjunction with our firewall vendor Palo Alto, engaged in the process of rebuilding D20 firewalls, which safeguard our network."
____
____
Watch KOAA News5 on your time, anytime with our free streaming app available for your Roku, FireTV, AppleTV and Android TV. Just search KOAA News5, download and start watching.
