Google services restored following student email 'incident'

Public schools in the ACT experienced an 'email incident' on Friday, 14 August in which spam emails containing inappropriate material were widely circulated to students.

The Education Directorate responded by temporarily blocking access to the Google platform, including Gmail, Google Drive and Google Classroom, declaring the entire platform unavailable pending further investigation and installation of appropriate controls.

The investigation indicated that students had gained access to system email distribution lists and inappropriately used these to send emails to their peers. The activity took place within the ACT Education Directorate network and it was determined there had been no external security breach, nor had an external body hacked or exported information from the system. The AFP and ACT policing were immediately notified of the incident. 

Further communication from the Education Directorate on 25 August advised that students were once again able to access Gmail accounts, which had been restored following restoration of Google Classrooms and Google Drive in the preceding week. The Directorate advised that removal of inappropriate content had required deletion of emails. 

Security enhancements were implemented including access limits to global groups, limiting the number of recipients a student can email and internal filter updates. Upgrades were based on advice from external consultants. 

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