Instructure, the company behind Canvas, an online learning system that manages nearly all aspects of instruction, said it “reached an agreement with the unauthorized actor” to delete data stolen during a cyberattack. Hackers took the platform offline May 7 for thousands of schools and universities, including the University of Minnesota, during finals, The Associated Press reported Tuesday.
A hacking group named ShinyHunters, which claimed responsibility for the breach, said they had obtained data involving nearly 9,000 schools and 275 million people and threatened to leak it if a ransom was not paid by May 6, a deadline that was later extended as schools engaged in negotiations. Instructure, which took the platform offline temporarily while investigating the hack, did not release details of the agreement, including whether a ransom was paid or who was behind the attack, according to the AP.
Minnesota’s Department of Human Services paid out more than $3.2 million in “achievement awards” to hundreds of its employees, about 6% of the agency’s workforce, including nine people working on Minnesota’s Housing Stabilization Services program during a time when warning signs of fraud were emerging, KSTP News reported Monday. DHS said it has “expanded the Achievement Awards policy to include recognition of staff efforts to prevent fraud, waste and abuse, and to strengthen internal controls,” in a statement to KSTP.
The Minnesota Nurses Association announced that nearly 600 nurses at North Memorial Health’s hospital in Maple Grove have voted to authorize an unfair labor practice strike, KARE 11 reported Tuesday. The Maple Grove nurses, who are working to secure their first union contract, are pushing to close pay gaps, improve working conditions and seek stronger staff protections.
The city of Minneapolis is considering a pilot program that would use two drones marked as police vehicles and equipped with red and blue police lights to respond to 911 calls and livestream video back to dispatch, serving as an “eye in the sky” for emergency responders, FOX 9 reported Monday. The program would operate out of Fire Station 14 in the Fourth Precinct on the city’s North Side.
Bundle Halal, co-founded by Ahmed Ali and Badraddin Abdi, is the state’s first grocery delivery service that caters to customers seeking halal-certified items, the Sahan Journal reported Tuesday. Ali and Abdi, two recent business school graduates, say their startup was inspired by a deep appreciation for Muslim and Somali families in Minnesota.
“This is targeting everybody, the fathers that don’t have time and don’t have the energy to go outside, people [for whom] it’s tough for them to go outside, and even for the young generation that are just getting married and that want to make it easier to experience halal meat. We tailor it for everybody, but one of the core reasons we started is for the mothers,” Ali told Sahan Journal.
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