Columbia Falls officials hold meeting

The Columbia Falls School District held an informational meeting Monday at noon with family and community members to answer any questions about cyber threats as students are set to return to school.

Other school districts held their own community meetings Monday, including Kalispell Public Schools and Whitefish School District.

There will be a large law enforcement presence at schools throughout the valley Tuesday as students return to class.

While school was canceled for the third day in a row Monday, staff returned to meet with administrators and make plans for when school resumes. Staff members throughout the valley have prepared age-appropriate discussion materials to be used to explain the situation with students.

Leading the Columbia Falls meeting was Columbia Falls Police Chief Clint Peters, Flathead County Undersheriff Dave Lieb and School District Superintendent Steve Bradshaw.

By Monday, law enforcement had deemed the cyber threat remained just that — an online risk only.

“At this point, we believe — and we essentially confirmed with these folks — that they are nowhere near us and that they are not a threat to our community as far as physical harm,” Peters said.

He assured parents, however, “It’s not just like we’re going to turn our backs though and say, ‘well, it’s over’ and walk away. Both our department and local agencies have committed to having a massive police presence in each and every school in the valley. We’re essentially adopting a school with a police officer with my staff and bringing in outside agencies as well. We’re not just going to shrug our shoulders and say, ‘well everything is fine,’” he continued.

Law enforcement has been communicating with the perpetrator or perpetrators via text. Peters said a cyber profiler was utilized to confirm that the threats weren’t coming from a local person.

“Throughout our conversation we were able to determine [from] some of the vocabulary they are using, and some of the things they say, they are not a local entity, that this is a group that is more than likely, I would say, overseas, but certainly not in Columbia Falls. The extent of their knowledge of the internet will put them in an extremely small percentage within the state and probably even in this country,” Peters said, later noting that it was likely there would be a demand of some sort and that he didn’t have an answer to why Columbia Falls was targeted.

“As of today, the threat to our community has essentially been taken off the table by this group and they have changed directions. We’re continuing to work with our negotiators with this,” Peters said.

WITH THE understanding that there will be a large law-enforcement presence in schools, Peters and Bradshaw said that each family must make the decision whether or not their child will attend school in the coming days. Kalispell Public Schools sent families a similar message, asking parents to notify schools if children are staying home.

“I do have four children in this school district,” Peters said. “If I had any doubt in my mind they were in peril, they would not be here ... I would not be suggesting that we reopen our doors.”

Bradshaw said that families who decide to keep students at home will not be penalized.

“One of the things we discussed with the teachers. It’s your choice, all right. ... We’re not going to penalize your child for not being there,” Bradshaw said, noting that the school days missed will likely be made up at the end of the school year.

“I’m not going to fault anybody nor will any administrator in this district or teacher fault you if you make a decision not to send your child,” Bradshaw added.

Columbia Falls Junior High Principal Dave Wick said if parents feel the need that they must attend school alongside their child, it would be best that they keep them at home as it would be more disruptive to track everyone.

Peters also reminded people, both adults and students, that it is illegal to bring firearms onto school property unless you are with law enforcement. He said that if people felt the need to drive around the school or parking lot, to do so with respect for students and the learning environment.

After-school activities will resume in addition to classes.

“We’re not changing our philosophies we’re not taking anything away that was already in place [in regard to school security]. All we’re saying is we’re going to be more vigilant with a police officer in place at every school,” Peters said.

Peters said officers have physically looked through the schools for potential bombs and vetted people that may potentially “be mad” at staff or the school district for whatever reason.

ON MONDAY, the phone system at Columbia Falls School District, which is “voice over internet” protocol, along with other technology connected to the internet, such as security cameras, was shut down to investigate how extensively the network was hacked. As of now administrators believe the perpetrators have accessed phone numbers, email and home addresses, birthdays, and student medical information. This information has been used to send text messages directly to some families as a way for the hacking group to gain control, but Bradshaw emphasized for people to not respond to any texts.

“We hope to be up and running again with tighter security because it seems like a lot of the issues have come directly from the people gaining access to our servers in this school district,” Bradshaw said, noting that security cameras had also been accessed.

Bradshaw said that over the past two years the school district has been transitioning to a cloud-based system, which he believes is more secure, but there are still local servers maintained by the district. Schools are required to keep student data for a certain period of time even if a student has graduated or left the district.

“We’ve hired an international firm that this is their job to go in and find what’s been hacked and hopefully how it’s been hacked — but everything so far indicates it’s been our local servers,” Bradshaw said.

As of now, law enforcement doesn’t believe other school districts in the valley were hacked, but it will take each school district to make that ultimate determination.

Bradshaw described schools as “low hanging fruit” when it comes to cyber security.

“School districts are not equipped, I mean we have your standard security, we all buy similar firewalls so people can’t do this hopefully, but we’re not like a bank or Equifax that just got hacked...” Bradshaw said. An FBI agent told Bradshaw he believes the person that did this “has the skill set to get in just about anywhere, and school districts are a pretty low-hanging fruit when it comes to be able to hack us. And we’re trying to get better. But our IT [Information Technology] people are IT people ... providing equipment and stuff for your children so that they can access the internet and hopefully get a better education. They are not security people.”

Bradshaw said LMG, the international consulting firm hired by the district, is working to improve security.

This isn’t the first incident of a data breach in a local school district. In November 2016, Bigfork School District had its network compromised with ransomware when malicious software was installed on it that encrypted and locked files from being opened and was followed by a ransom demand. At the time, Bigfork School District worked to resolve the incident by recovering data from backup files and did not engage with the perpetrators, which could have been located anywhere around the world. The Bigfork district did not receive threats as extensive or graphic in nature as the current incident in Columbia Falls.

Reporter Hilary Matheson can be reached at 758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.

This article was updated to reflect that there isn’t a 50 percent student attendance requirement in order to count as a school day as originally stated by Bradshaw.