In December of 2023, the St. Mary Parish School Board said it began having connectivity issues which prevented the School Board from accessing its local system. School Board officials immediately contacted law enforcement and technology professionals to investigate the matter. Law enforcement and state officials subsequently confirmed that bad actors had accessed the School Board’s local network. The School Board was able to successfully remediate the vulnerabilities within its network while maintaining all its public services. On January 31, 2024, it was confirmed that the School Board had been the victim of a cyber incident, which could potentially require notification under La. R.S. 51:3074 and L.A.C. 16:III.701.
In a press release issued on Friday, the school board stated that Lengthy measures have been taken to review any potential data leaks. Although there is no evidence that any data was acquired or accessed, as a precautionary measure, the St. Mary Parish School Board is sending notifications to current and former employees (dating back to 2021), whose information may have been impacted. All student data is cloud-based and was never at-risk. Since the incident, all employee data has been transferred to a cloud-based software platform.