On Monday, Jan. 9, the Carbon School District released a statement explaining that it had fallen victim to a data breach. A hacker gained access to the district’s student information system by accessing the account of an employee of the edtech company PowerSchool, which provides the system for the district.
“Our technology team attended an online meeting with PowerSchool yesterday where they explained what happened and what steps the company is taking to ensure data will not be made public and prevent something like this from happening again. A PowerSchool representative said, “We believe and have assurance that the data has been deleted.” This means that the data stolen during the hacking was destroyed and it is unlikely that the data will be shared publicly,” reads the statement from the district.
The CSD is not the only victim of this breach, which affected schools from Massachusetts to California. PowerSchool is the largest provider of education technology in the United States, according to its website, serving more than 75% of students.
As for the information taken as a part of this hack, social security numbers mark the biggest concern for the district and impacted students. “As a general rule, we do not collect social security numbers from our students, but we did have three (3) students with social security numbers in the system. Guardians of these students will be contacted individually and given guidance from our technology team as a precautionary measure.”
Those with potentially stolen social security numbers will also receive prioritized credit monitoring on behalf of PowerSchool.
In a statement acquired by TechCrunch from PowerSchool spokesperson Beth Keebler,” We have taken all appropriate steps to prevent the data involved from further unauthorized access or misuse. The incident is contained and we do not anticipate the data being shared or made public. PowerSchool is not experiencing, nor expects to experience, any operational disruption and continues to provide services as normal to our customers.”
This isn’t the first time that the tech giant has found itself in hot water, in 2024 a class-action lawsuit alleged that the company was trafficking student data and selling it to third parties without proper consent. “PowerSchool collects this highly sensitive information under the guise of educational support, but in fact collects it for its own commercial gain, ” reads the suit.
Closing the statement, the district states,” After the meeting yesterday, we believe that the situation has been handled the best way possible and that our data is very unlikely to be made public. We will continue direct communication with PowerSchool, and we will inform our community every time new information is shared with us.”
*This story may be updated