Unadilla Valley Central School District’s former student information system provider was subject to a recent data breach.
PowerSchool reached out to UV last week to let us know that they became aware of a nationwide data breach on Dec. 28. PowerSchool indicated the breach was not caused by any actions taken by anyone at Unadilla Valley, and there was nothing the school district could have done to prevent the incident.
The credentials of a PowerSchool contract employee were compromised, which led to the data breach. PowerSchool became aware of this on Dec. 28 and confirmed that unauthorized access started on Dec. 19. The company has been contacting school districts that had data compromised by the breach as they learned which school districts had been impacted. PowerSchool has shared that the data accessed was destroyed and it does not believe any additional copies remain.
“We are still working through our detailed data review for each of the impacted customers; however, we believe the export data manager tool was used to extract only student and teacher tables. These tables primarily include contact information with data elements such as name and address information,” PowerSchool said in a statement to UV.
For some districts the breach included social security numbers and medical information, however there were no social security numbers or medical information uploaded to any student or staff accounts at UV. The district replaced PowerSchool with SchoolTool, a system from a different company, three years ago.
PowerSchool is taking the following steps and will reach out to individuals impacted by the breach directly:
Identity Protection and Credit Monitoring Services: PowerSchool has engaged Experian a trusted credit reporting agency, to offer complimentary identity protection and credit monitoring services to all students and educators whose information was involved, regardless of whether an individual’s Social Security number was exfiltrated.
Identity Protection: PowerSchool will be offering two years of complimentary identity protection services for all students and educators whose information was involved.
Credit Monitoring: PowerSchool will also be offering two years of complimentary credit monitoring services for all adult students and educators whose information was involved.
For more information on the breach, please visit: https://www.powerschool.com/security/sis-incident/