(TNS) — When the Broward School District learned that hackers may have accessed the personal data of thousands of people from district servers, its response was to hide and delay.
The district took extraordinary steps to keep the public, including 50,000 potential victims, from learning about ransomware attacks that took place from November 2020 to March 2021, a South Florida Sun Sentinel investigation has found.
Among these efforts, the district:
- Waited five months to report key information to affected individuals as well as to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, three months longer than a federal rule allows. The department is investigating the district’s response.
- Alerted the public in November it had conducted its own investigation into the data breach but later said the findings of the investigation were never put in writing.
- Used a public relations firm to help dodge questions from the news media and persuade the public that personal data wasn’t at risk.
- Rejected a public records request for emails related to the ransomware, with a district lawyer saying “it is not worth any of our…
