On Friday 1 February 2019, we became aware of a number of spam emails being sent to staff and parents from academy email addresses. We believe the issues experienced today are as a result of a compromise to the email system, which has affected the email accounts of some individuals.
If you receive an email from a member of academy staff, please be vigilant. Do not click on any links you are unsure about and permanently delete any suspicious emails. In the event you have already clicked on a suspicious link, the advice is to ensure you run a virus scan and change any passwords after.
We are one of many organisations affected by today’s spam email attack, which appears to be virus related and has targeted the education sector.
The academy has not been hacked, but the issue is widespread. It has likely been caused by an individual receiving an email containing a link, which when clicked and opened, enables a virus to spread across multiple recipients. The virus is targeting email accounts and appears to be designed to spread across organisations and individuals, by bypassing security systems.
We take our responsibility for the management of personal data very seriously, and the ICO will be informed of this data breach.
