Jackson County ISD ransomware forces three-day school closures across two Michigan counties

Jackson County Intermediate School District detected a ransomware attack during the weekend of November 12-13, 2022, affecting technology infrastructure used by schools in Jackson and Hillsdale counties, Michigan. The district proactively shut down affected systems to contain the incident. Critical operating systems supporting school activities, including communications, building-related technology and classroom services, became unavailable or unreliable. Public schools across the two counties suspended instruction from November 14 through November 16, reopening on November 17 after essential systems had been restored sufficiently to permit operations. Jackson County ISD provides shared technology services to participating districts, making this a documented case of disruption originating in a shared IT service provider and propagating to dependent educational institutions. The Jackson and Hillsdale records in the supplied dataset describe the same underlying incident and are consolidated here.