Hanover County Public Schools

Summary

HanoverCounty Public Schools reported a possible data incident that disabled the district’s internet and several internal systems, leading officials to tell staff to stop using district devices and prepare for technology‑free instruction for at least the coming week. The network remains inaccessible with no restoration timeline, while students were advised to halt Chromebook use as a precaution. Cybersecurity experts, legal counsel and state and federal agencies are investigating, but few details have been released.

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Description

Hanover County Public Schools began investigating a possible data incident on or before Wednesday afternoon, according to district communications. The incident resulted in the shutdown of the district's internet service and multiple internal systems. The disruption was deemed severe enough that, on Thursday afternoon, staff were instructed to stop using HCPS devices. Staff were also told to prepare for technology‑free instruction for at least the next week. At the time of the notice, there was no access to the HCPS network. District officials indicated that they did not have a timeline for when service would be restored.

While students' Chromebooks were not yet affected by the outage, the district asked students to refrain from using their computers as a precautionary measure. Hanover County Public Schools officials are working with cybersecurity experts to investigate the incident. The district has also engaged outside legal counsel and is coordinating with state and federal authorities. In both the Thursday email to faculty and the subsequent post to families, officials stated that, for important reasons, they are very limited in what they can share about the situation. An HCPS spokesperson told Axios that they are unable to provide further comment at this time.

Sources

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