Case Study: Spring Independent School District thwarts ransomware and restores services in under 12 hours with Cohesity DataProtect

Spring Independent School District thwarts ransomware attack with Cohesity on AWS

Spring Independent School District, a Houston-area district serving over 35,000 students across 43 campuses, faced increasing cyber threats and complexity from multiple legacy backup tools and a co‑location DR site. In November 2020 the district was hit by a ransomware attack that encrypted local systems and threatened remote learning and administrative operations, so IT needed a fast, reliable way to recover critical services without paying a ransom.

Using Cohesity DataProtect with immutable backups stored on-premises and in AWS, the district restored Active Directory and key learning servers from the cloud in under 12 hours and had finance and the Student Information System back within two days—teachers resumed classes the next day and payroll was uninterrupted. The consolidated solution eliminated four legacy products, cut data-management TCO by 10–15%, sped file restores from hours to minutes, and helped secure favorable cyber‑insurance rates.

Spring Independent School District

Roberto Solorzano

Senior System Engineer