Description
The Uvalde School District in San Antonio, Texas, was forced to shut down the week of September 15, 2025, due to a ransomware attack. The attack was detected over the prior weekend on September 13, which led to school leadership cancelling classes for Monday morning. In addition to the school district’s website being taken offline, the attack also impacted many core systems, including the phone system, air conditioning, thermostat controls, security cameras, electronic access system, payroll, and the student information system.
Actions Taken
In addition to closing down operations, the school system implemented a forensic investigation that involved the FBI and other agencies. The school’s cyber insurance provider is also providing outside security specialists to aid in the investigation.
Prevention
Years ago, the implementation of a simple 3-2-1 backup strategy was considered an ample approach to recovering from ransomware attacks. Since then, attackers have begun targeting the backup system to encrypt or compromise the backups to prevent recovery. Many organizations have turned to immutable backups to counter this threat. Unlike traditional backups, immutable backups are written in a way that prohibits any modification, encryption, or deletion so that ransomware cannot alter them. In addition, air-gapped backups residing in a secure cloud location can further preserve data integrity by isolating it from compromised local systems, providing a critical last line of defense.
Ask about our partner tech solution: N-Able Cove for backup.
Because email continues to be a primary delivery mechanism for ransomware, regular cybersecurity awareness and phishing training should be regularly conducted. Organizational users serve as the first line of defense, and strengthening their security awareness and habits significantly reduces vulnerability to phishing and social engineering attacks.
As this incident clearly demonstrates, ransomware does more than just encrypt files. It can cripple critical services like phone systems, digitized cooling systems and other infrastructure that many organizations don’t realize is vulnerable to such attacks. This is where a comprehensive incident response plan (IRP) becomes essential, with teams mapping out every system component that could be affected and establishing clear remediation steps for each scenario.
HALOCK can partner with you to strengthen your profile and achieve reasonable security.
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