Janesville School District Systems Infected With Virus

Computer virus that attacked the Janesville School District (Wisconsin) systems has been removed, but the problems still remain with many questions left unanswered, as reported by gazettextea on November 12, 2008.

The virus attacked school systems that cut off many teachers and students from their saved files and programs. Use of computer software applications was also halted. And District and other workers have been repairing the system gradually.

Although the virus created many problems to the Janesville School District, this did not cause any problem to attendance of the students. Moreover, the computer virus disabled some of the programs. The virus detector disabled the virus, but the damage had already done.

One problem is with those systems that won't be connected to printers though several printer links have been set up again. Further, the district avoided several virus attacks over the years as it did not purchase Microsoft products. But the school authorities claim that as the Microsoft applications become more prevalent, the district has failed to maintain security standards.

The school board investigating the attack is not satisfied with the current progress. Lori Stottler, Board member, claims at a committee meeting that she is not satisfied with the malfunctioning of systems and not happy with the responses about the origin of the problem, as reported by gazettextea on November 12, 2008.

According to the consultants, the Janesville School District did not expect any virus that deteriorated their computers in the last few weeks. Also, the district computer maintenance staff is incapable to handle the situation. The consultants further said that the staff was not involved in monitoring the servers properly and frequently. Anti-virus program was not efficient enough, as the virus succeeded to surpass it.

The director of business services for the district said that they have to reset and reload the servers because not every building in the district is facing the problem. Still the virus has created a huge mess for both district and tech staff, which have been working 12-14 hour per day, and working on weekends.

» SPAMfighter News - 11/27/2008