Blount County Schools experiences security breach

On June 17, Blount County Schools sent a letter to all its employees to alert them of a security breach.

The letter, signed by Director of Schools David Murrell, stated that on June 7, BCS discovered “unauthorized access” to its payroll system.

The letter reported that 34 employees had their personal information tampered with by the culprits.

Assistant Director Jake Jones said that BCS was first notified that an employee did not receive their paycheck.

He said at first, they thought the missing paycheck may have been an error on the district’s part, but after investigating with the tech department, they found that someone had tampered with the system.

“Once we were notified about the issue on a Friday and once they were able to investigate what the problem was and identify where the areas were at, then they were able to get the letter created and get it out ASAP so families can check their accounts,” Jones said.

The letter urged employees to place fraud alerts on their credit files and instructed them on how to obtain credit reports from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.

The 34 employees who were directly affected were contacted by BCS privately.

Jones said he believed this was the first time BCS experienced a breach of this nature.

The breach was reported to the F.B.I. Internet Crime Complaint Center said Jones.