K12, an online education academy offering curriculum to US students from Kindergarden to 12th standard, has disclosed through an SEC filing that it became a victim to a ransomware attack and some portion of sensitive data was stolen by hackers from its database.
A spokesperson from the Herndon based educational institute that offers online education stated that hackers accessed parts of its back office systems and stole information related to its students and employee.
As K12 company is covered under a cyber insurance policy, the online education management firm bowed down to the demands of hackers and paid a million/s to decrypt the data on its servers and stopped the hackers from publishing the data onto the dark web.
The organization that works for profit has disclosed that it has appointed a team of advisers on data security compliance to help the company gauge the impact of the cyber incident. And news is out that the team makes up retired attorney general and a federal prosecutor who has already zeroed on the perpetrators and will reveal the details after the full probe gets concluded.
K12 that is going to be renamed as Stride on December 16th,2020 did not disclose the exact date of the ransomware attack, but assured that the grades, teachers related data, student material and information related to assignments were not affected/disrupted in the attack. Enrollment, financial reporting, shipping and accounting information also remained unaffected.
Note- Coming to acquisitions, K12 purchased coding school Galvanize for $165 million in January this year. In November, the online tech academy reportedly gained Tech Elevator for $23.5 million and Online Career certification company MedCerts for $63 million.
