L.A., 2nd Largest U.S. School District Hit by Ransomware

A ransomware attack hit the Los Angeles Unified School District over the weekend, but the school district maintains it was able to open its schools as scheduled, Axios reported Tuesday.

The second largest school district in the country, Los Angeles Unified, which serves over 650,000 students at nearly 1,000 schools, said Tuesday it faced "significant disruptions" to its email, computer systems, and applications.

"Since the identification of the incident, which is likely criminal in nature, we continue to assess the situation with law enforcement agencies," the school district stated.

"Based on a preliminary analysis of critical business systems," it adds, "employee healthcare and payroll are not impacted, nor has the cyber incident impacted safety and emergency mechanisms in place at schools."

The Los Angeles Unified also mentioned it benefited from "an immediate and comprehensive response" from the Department of Education, the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the FBI after notifying the government over the weekend.

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