The Pinal County Schools ransomware attacks have taken a new turn. Printer issues are now the reason for the delay in paying some school employees on Friday.
ABC15 has received the following from Pinal County Superintendent of Schools on Friday.
“On Sunday the Pinal County School Office Data Processing Service Consortium suffered a ransomware.
Pinal County Schools Superintendent’s Office personnel have worked around the clock ever since to restore school district access. Payroll processing has been affected for those school districts who had not processed their payroll prior to the last weekend’s attacks. To ensure employees are paid as promptly as possible, the School Superintendent’s Office is today printing checks for the 4514 impacted staff who work in the following school districts: Apache Junction, Casa Grande High School, Combs, Coolidge, Florence, Maricopa, Mary C. O’Brien, Oracle, Picacho, Sacaton, Santa Cruz, Stanfield, Superior, and Toltec. These school districts’ employees should wait for instructions from their district as to when they can collect checks. The School Superintendent’s Office is aware of the difficulties this situation will cause our employees and apologizes profusely for any inconvenience caused. The Office works with Homeland Security and FBI to fully investigate the incident and implement additional safeguards. This isolated system does not connect to the Pinal County Government IT Network. Therefore, no other Pinal County IT systems were affected.”
The process would be slowed down and the checks delayed. The Florence Unified School District thought they’d have checks ready by 2 p.m. Friday, but when employees showed up, they were met with bad news. Checks were delayed by printer issues, and the employees wouldn’t be receiving their checks until Friday. Most employees have taken it in stride.
“They’ve been pretty supportive and understanding,” said Toby Haugen, FUSD’s director of human resources. “They’re frustrated, we’re frustrated we all want to get paid and go about our lives and pay rent and buy groceries, it’s nerve-wracking and frustrating “
The Maricopa Unified Schools District and Casa Grande Union high School District were able send out checks despite the delay.
“We felt completely helpless,” said Maricopa Unified Superintendent Tracey Lopeman.”Rent and mortgages are due childcare payments, everything is due at the first of the month, plus we’re in the middle of our two-week fall break.”
Pinal County Superintendent, told ABC15 that they will be working round the clock to ensure checks are sent to all districts who may have been affected.
