PINAL COUNTY, Ariz. — Over 4,500 employees in school districts in Pinal County are awaiting pay after a ransomware attack impacted payroll processing, Pinal County School Superintendent’s Office said in a statement.
The Pinal County School Office Data Processing Service Consortium was the victim of a ransomware attack on Sept. 24, according to a statement from the Pinal County School Superintendent’s Office. Payroll processing was impacted by the attack for school districts that had not processed payroll prior to the attack.
The statement said to ensure employees are paid as “promptly as possible,” the superintendent’s office is printing checks for the 4,513 impacted staff members who work in the affected school districts. The districts include:
- Apache Junction
- Casa Grande High School
- Combs
- Coolidge
- Florence
- Maricopa
- Mary C. O’Brien
- Oracle
- Sacaton
- Santa Cruz
- Stanfield
- Superior
- Toltec
Employees of the affected school districts need to wait for instructions from their district for when to pick up checks, the statement read.
“The School Superintendent’s Office recognizes the difficulty this will cause employees of our school districts, and wholeheartedly apologizes for the inconvenience resulting from this unfortunate situation,” the statement said.
The superintendent’s office is working with authorities, including Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigations, to investigate the situation. According to the release, the attack is not connected to the Pinal County Government IT Network, so no other Pinal County systems were impacted.
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