The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating cyber attacks on a server used to administer the Florida Standards Assessment that led to last week's statewide testing delays, officials said Monday.
"While most Florida students are continuing to test successfully, we now know that some of the delays in testing late last week were due to cyber-attacks on our testing system operated by American Institutes for Research (AIR)," Education Commissioner Pam Stewart said in a statement. "The Department has been working with FDLE since last Thursday when we were notified about the problem and we will continue to provide them with any information possible to ensure they identify the bad actors and hold them accountable to the fullest extent of the law. We are holding daily conference calls with AIR to ensure they immediately address any flaws or attacks on our system as we move forward in this second week of testing."
Stewart said no student data has been compromised and that measures that were put into place should prevent any future attacks.
Technical issues unrelated to the cyber attack had forced districts to suspend FSA testing last week, including in Miami-Dade and Broward. Some of the delays were because test administrators could not log in, and others were students being logged out of the test prior to completion.
Officials said an update performed by AIR had inadvertently resulted in the delays but that the issue with the log on server was resolved by Tuesday afternoon. Concerns of a cyber attack didn't occur until Thursday morning, officials said.
A total of 397,352 students completed the test in the first week of the two-week testing, Stewart said.
