In September, the staff members of Rockford Public Schools’ technology department faced their worst IT nightmare: A ransomware attack was spreading across the data center and encrypting servers.

The Illinois district’s IT infrastructure is designed to text IT staff when a server disconnects. On a Thursday night, Executive Director of Technology Jason Barthel and his team were bombarded by a barrage of texts. About 85 of 300 virtual servers shut down in rapid succession.

Barthel logged in to investigate but couldn’t restart the servers remotely, so he rushed to the data center to discover that the servers, some housing mission-critical applications, were encrypted. He disconnected internet access to contain the outbreak, which prevented further encryption, but many systems were already affected.

“We decided school would go on, but it was going back to basics: life ­without technology for several weeks,” Barthel says.