Accountability needs to be shown in wake of C2K system hack

ACCOUNTABILITY must be shown in the wake of the cyber attack upon school IT systems. 

 This is the opinion of Conor Hughes, president of the Secondary Students Union of Northern Ireland.

 Mr Hughes, who is in his final year of study at Abbey CBS, made the comment after he and thousands of other students were left unable to remotely access their school accounts over the Easter break as a result of the cyber attack on C2K systems.

    As a result Conor joined 200 other Abbey students who returned to the school over their holidays, a period which many pupils use to undergo vital exam revision, to have their C2K passwords reset.

This was done with the advice and assistance of the Education Authority who worked swiftly to help ameliorate the difficulties arising from the attack.  

However whilst the efforts taken on the part of C2K and the Education Authority to try and effectively resolve the problem were appreciated Conor is of the opinion that some sort of contingency plan should have already been put in place to account for an event such as this and that in his own words “it is not fair that (his) school year should have to suffer as a result of this .”

Apology

“It is not fair that my school year should have to suffer as a result of this” said Conor

“There has not really been an apology as such for what has happened.

“Surely this was not something that was never thought of? It is not as if things have not happened in the past with other public sector software systems.

“I don't understand how their was not something in place. If you think about any system. Schools have fire systems. We do fire drills. It is things like this that are needed and I don't understand why as a public body you would not have this in place.

“It is the wake up call they needed but as I said it is not fair that my school year should have to suffer as a result of this.”

Disruption

Whilst thanks to his own due diligence as a hard working pupil of the Abbey along with the assistance he and his peers received on the part of their much beloved school the level of disruption caused to Conor’s education over the Easter Break was thankfully kept to a minimum.       

However this was not the case for many students across Northern  Ireland who were left at a loss as to what to do  whenever they could not access  school resources remotely .   

This was a fact which was related to Mr Hughes time and again in his capacity as the president of The Secondary Student’s Union of Northern Ireland.  

“I am the president of the Secondary Students Union of Northern Ireland. A lot of schools in Derry and Belfast had the issue where a lot of school files are uploaded onto shared resources. You can go in and see the notes the teacher uses or whatever. Some schools because of Covid lockdown had adapted very heavily to online uses as it is a way to save printing money. However the problem with this is whenever things like this go wrong there is no plan B

“A Plan B would be preventative measures to prevent something like this from happening. Secondly access to technology has always been an issue within education and I think that giving students access to more technology, whenever issues like this do happen makes it less hard.

“For example the people who went into school to change their C2K passwords to access C2K. If the school did not open up and allow access to the facilities in the school to do this, how would some people have done this? There are some people who are living in what could be called technological poverty where they do not have access to a computer or laptop like their peers do.

“With Easter coming so early this year this was a prime opportunity for a lot of people to get the bulk of their theory revised to then focus on the next three or four weeks for their exams to get in a past paper. This was the time that a lot of pupils allocated to going into the depth of study, this is when they really pushed themselves.

“ They were not leaving it too late as after the break they had three weeks to go back to school and ask their teachers questions and things like this.

“Another matter was that we could not access our school emails. Okay teachers are on a break however a lot of people would still be in contact with teachers be it through coursework or science practical's.

“Not having access to have this communication between teacher and student is really detrimental to those people who relied on this for the extra additional support over the break maybe if there was coursework to do and things like this.

“I wasn't in these circumstances as I sent in all my coursework early. I do know that in our school we have environmental technology, construction and art. These are a lot of coursework subjects where their is a need for teacher support some times.

“Not even access direct communication but even past emails, if you look at your past emails the support you got earlier in the week with documents and things that have been sent to you previously either through teachers or feedback. You cannot develop your work if you do not have the feedback you were going to use.

Apology and Accountability

Whilst an apology on the part of C2K would be appreciated, Conor is of the opinion that above all else accountability needs to be shown to ensure an incident of this nature cannot occur again.

“There has to be an aspect of accountability. It is not so much an apology as it is not going to mend them and I don't think anyone hearing a heartfelt apology coming from C2K would really be mended but I think that accountability is what needs to be shown. Yes we have made the mistake and here is the preventative measures we are going to put in place to ensure this does not happen again. This would be not so much an apology but more so accountability.”

Targeted Attack

Providing an update on the ongoing investigation into the cyber attack incident a spokesperson for the Education Authority explained how there was a targeted attack on a small number of schools.

    ”The ongoing investigation into the recent cyber incident has now confirmed that there was a targeted attack on a small number of schools which is believed to have compromised some personal data.

“Our immediate priority is notifying the individuals and schools impacted by the attack. That process is being urgently progressed, guided by the final findings of the investigation and advice from the PSNI and the Information

Commissioner’s Office.

“It remains the assessment of our system managers that the cyber incident is contained. Additional security measures were deployed at the beginning of this month on detection of the incident.

“Intensive work continues to ensure schools are fully reconnected to the C2k system and that all impacted systems return to normal.”