Haileybury College in Victoria has revealed it was the victim of a cyber attack in October, with an unknown attacker gaining limited access to the school’s network.
“This week, Haileybury became aware of a malicious attempt to access our systems,” Derek Scott, CEO and principal of the school, said in a 31 October statement.
Scott said the breach was contained once the intrusion had been discovered and that impacted systems were isolated.
“Haileybury’s comprehensive Cyber Security Incident Response Plan was instantly activated, and our school’s crisis management team, as well as our external cyber security experts, were engaged,” Scott said.
“While our team was able to contain the unauthorised access quickly, we believe the malicious actors have gained limited access to our network, and we are working to understand what information they may have accessed.”
“Haileybury has long recognised the potential risk of cyber incidents and maintains a rigorous, ongoing program of planning, testing and monitoring to ensure it can respond swiftly and effectively to incidents of this nature.”
Scott said the school takes network security “extremely seriously” and that the safety of students and staff was its “highest priority”.
“Our community has been notified, and we will keep our staff and families informed as soon as we have more information,” he said.
Founded in 1898, Haileybury has four campuses across Melbourne, a school in Darwin, a partner school in China, and an online campus. It offers early childhood education through to year 12, and as of 2023, it had more than 4,500 students enrolled.
No threat actor has claimed responsibility for the hack as of the time of publishing.
David Hollingworth
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.