SOUTH LYON, Mich. (WXYZ) — South Lyon Community Schools will reopen Thursday after being closed Wednesday for a third day due to a network security incident.
The district announced the reopening of schools on social media Wednesday afternoon, saying families and staff would get more information via email.
Watch Ryan's report on Wednesday's closure in the video player below
According to the district, they detected a network outage on Sunday, which they later confirmed was the result of a security incident, which has since interrupted their day-to-day operations.
The superintendent says there has been significant improvement since Sunday, but the system is still not restored to the level needed to safely open schools.
The superintendent released the following statement Tuesday night:
Good evening,
Unfortunately, SLCS will be closed tomorrow, September 17th, due to the network interruptions and phone systems being down. Our teams are continuing to work diligently to restore impacted systems. While there has been significant improvement, we cannot ensure our systems will be restored to the level of security and communication we need to safely open school. We will provide updates as they become available.
Steve Archibald
Archibald went into more detail during last night's school board meeting. He said, among other things, all of their phone systems and surveillance cameras are currently down.
“We have, currently, the inability to call in or call out of our building, which includes our E-911 notifications," Archibald explained. "We also have an emergency operating plan. A lot of communication redundancies built in, with that system. And so, should there be a critical incident, the alert in ALICE and the information in ALICE would be severely compromised. And so, that’s the main reason that we’ve made the decision that we have had to be closed.”
Archibald also said they don't have any evidence that student or faculty data had been compromised, lost, or viewed, but it's still an ongoing investigation.
That information is securely stored via a third-party company on a cloud-based network separate from the school district's network. As of Wednesday morning, there's no update on when classes will resume.
