We recently supported a Birmingham school that experienced a ransomware attack. The attack was understood to have specifically targeted their remote desktop and exchange servers before spreading across the wider network. This resulted in the enforced closure of the school as all files, MIS, safeguarding, curriculum, and finance systems were encrypted and inaccessible.
Fortunately, the school had already purchased our FileSafe cloud backup service, which meant that an exact copy of their data was held in our secure cloud storage and safe from malicious encryption.
The school was then able to successfully restore their systems and data, allowing them to be fully operational within two days.
As part of the work to get the school back up and running, we assisted with the restoration process for all of their servers which had been backed up using our FileSafe platform.
We also took the opportunity to work with the school technical staff to move their physical servers into a new virtual environment, to help save money by reducing the number of servers on site, reducing the electricity consumption, and allowing for quicker recovery in the future, should this ever happen again.
This involved restoring the servers onto a new Windows Server Hyper-V host server, which was completely segregated from the domain that was compromised by the cyber-attack.
The SIPS IT team worked out of hours over the weekend to assist in this process to ensure minimal downtime for the school.
What they said: “I have to say Chris Tromans at SIPS has been fantastic with his support; working evenings and weekends to assist with our backup and recovery.”
About FileSafe: this is our online cloud backup platform – the ideal solution to securely backup your school’s data to our UK based datacentres. The data is protected against total loss should the infrastructure or fabric of the school be compromised. All data is transferred to a secure UK data centre and held in an encrypted form, preventing access by unauthorised parties. We currently offer storage capacity of 500gb, 1tb or 4tb. Additional storage options available upon request.
