Education technology company FinalSite is still in the process of recovering[1] from a devastating ransomware attack that crippled many of the services they provide to thousands of schools across the world this week.
In an update on Friday morning, the company said the "vast majority" of its sites are back up and running on the front end, but many systems are still facing a variety of issues.
They urged their customers -- which include thousands of schools across 115 different countries -- to limit "software usage to critical information updates for your front-end" until they have confirmed that all functionality is working fully.
"Examples of usage to avoid include sending email/notifications, workflows, relying on calendar and athletic alerts, uploading data etc.," the company said.
While some front end systems are back, FinalSite said some styling may be missing, and users may not be able to access the admin side of their site. Many users will continue to see 503 errors, according to FinalSite.
The company first informed customers of issues on January 4 and said its engineers have been working around the clock to resolve the issue. By Thursday, the company admitted[2] that it was suffering from a ransomware attack.
"We are incredibly sorry for this prolonged outage and fully realize the stress it is causing your organizations. While we have made progress overnight to get all websites up and running, full restoration has taken us longer than anticipated," they wrote in a message to customers.
"In the ensuing time since the incident, our security, infrastructure, and engineering teams have been working around the clock to restore backup systems and bring our network back to full performance, in a safe and secure manner. Third-party forensic specialists are assisting us in bringing things back slowly