Colleton County School Board to spend nearly $200K on cyber incident

COLLETON COUNTY, S.C. (WCSC) - The Colleton County School Board voted Wednesday to hire three companies to manage a cyber incident that affected hundreds of staff computers.

The board will spend $190,520 to retain Dell Support Services, Red Cloak and Carbon Black to manage the cyber incident, following a vote at a special meeting.

The board said the incident affected approximately 800 staff computers and will require approximately 480 hours of work, including the services of a forensics engineer and a network engineer.

The board did not provide any specific details on the nature of the “cyber incident.”

The district’s information technology staff discovered that district networks were not in operation on Oct. 4.

“The district IT staff immediately began investigation and recovery measures and contacted a professional Incident Response and Recovery team to assist,” school district spokesman Sean Gruber said.

The board initially sought legal advice on the issue on Oct. 19.

Gruber said district facilities remained secure during the investigation and no physical security measures in place at Colleton County schools were affected.

The meeting is expected to be available on the district’s Youtube channel by 4:30 p.m. on Thursday.

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