As many will have seen, on Friday 12th May 2017 several large organisations, including several NHS trusts, Telefonica, several car manufacturers and other large organisations suffered a cyber attack in the form of ransomware installed onto computers across the organisations.  Due to the widespread nature of the attack spanning multiple countries, we cannot assume that we, as an organisation, will not be targeted at some point.  We ask students and staff to be mindful of the origins of USB pen drives and which computers they have been attached to and to report any unexpected behaviour from any computer to a member of IT staff.

Over this past weekend (13th and 14th May 2017) we have rolled out several security updates, both to our antivirus and antimalware solution (Kaspersky) and to Windows 7.  This will, unfortunately, lead to some disruption early in the week as all computers receive these updates as Windows requires a reboot for them to apply.  Due to the severity of the issue, we have instructed Windows to install the patches and reboot immediately (with notifications).  We would ask that all staff and students please bear with us while we apply these updates, particularly on staff laptops which we will not have been able to update over the weekend.

Thank you for your patience while we work to ensure that we do not suffer in the same way as some of these organisations.

Update on 15/05/2017 at 06:18: We are already making good progress with approximately 42% of our computers having now applied the update.  We have performed an earlier-than-normal scheduled wake-up on all desktops across the school this morning to try and aid with swift patching and minimise disruption.  We encourage staff to ensure that their laptops are updated by turning them on and leaving them on for 1-2 hours.