One Friday in July, just before the start of the school year, Caroline Sice was out to lunch with a friend when she got an alarming call from a colleague. Lanesend Primary — a school on the Isle of Wight in the U.K., where Sice has been head teacher for 12 years — had been hit by a ransomware attack. All of the information stored on its network was completely inaccessible. 

“Everything had been encrypted,” said Sice. “All the children’s records, staff records, all the teaching and learning, all the data, all the finances, internet. Everything.” 

Lanesend Primary, which serves roughly 400 students, aged four to 11 years old, had experienced IT problems the day before. Staff couldn’t access their emails or remotely log into the school’s systems. Sice was aware of the issues, but attributed them to routine maintenance. 

“I really, really hadn’t thought that it would be a cyber attack,” she said.