Dear Parents & Students,
Mercy High School was notified November 12, 2020 by the vendor which provides Mercy’s Cafeteria point of sale (POS) system, that they were the victim of a ransomware attack. Subsequently, many of the clients the vendor supports (including Mercy High School) were attacked using a remote support tool that the vendor had installed on the system. The attackers encrypted the database and database backup files demanding payment for the decryption keys.
Working with our vendor, we made attempts to restore the stolen data, but were not successful. As a result, all previously stored student and staff cafeteria account balances were lost. However, our Business Office and Cafeteria staff were able to determine the balance amounts working with data from previous financial records and the balances have been restored on student cafeteria accounts.
Be assured, that other than student name, student number and the balance amount, no other personal data was stored on this database. We take the safeguarding of our student data very seriously and we are taking numerous steps to mitigate and minimize these kinds of threats going forward.
We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause. If you notice any discrepancy in your cafeteria balance, please feel free to contact Anne Hallberg, Food Service Director, through email at amhallberg@mhsmi.org.
Sincerely,
The Mercy Administration
