Cyber security breaches force Hillsborough, Bernards schools to close

A pair of school districts in Somerset County have dealt with what appeared to be cyber security attacks, according to officials.

In Bernards, there was a network outage last week that impacted district internet, computer networks and other IT systems, according to Bernards schools Superintendent Nick Markarian.

On Monday, Hillsborough schools dealt with a systems breach that prompted a day off, as reported by MyCentralJersey.com.

All classes in Hillsborough remained fully remote for Wednesday and Thursday, according to the school district’s Facebook page.

“Upon discovering the outage the district immediately reported the incident to law enforcement, took steps to contain the incident and engaged an independent cybersecurity firm to assist us in our investigation. That investigation remains ongoing, ” Markarian continued.

The latest security breaches come as more districts have been working to return to some or more in-person instruction, more than a year since every public school went fully remote at the first height of the pandemic.

Back in September, remote instruction in the Paterson school district was derailed during the first week of school when some students had taken to sharing obscene material as educators scrambled to shut down such capabilities using the popular Google Classroom platform.

As of Monday, 496 school districts statewide were open for hybrid instruction, while 165 districts were back for all in-person instruction. That’s an increase of roughly nine schools or districts from the week before, according to state education officials.

Another 118 schools or districts remained on an all-remote schedule, while 32 districts or schools reported being a combination of instruction models.

With previous reporting by Dan Alexander