The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) revealed on Monday that the PowerSchool breach from earlier this year may have exposed student data dating as far back as 1985.
PowerSchool is an application used by TDSB and many other school boards in North America to store information about students. Late last year, a PowerSchool community-focused customer portal called PowerSource was breached in a cybersecurity incident. At the time, it wasn’t immediately clear what personal information was impacted in the hack.
Now, the TDSB says that what information was compromised may depend on when someone was a TDSB student. According to the Toronto Star, the board said it doesn’t store any social insurance numbers, or financial or banking information in PowerSchool, so that data isn’t impacted.
But for people who were TDSB students between September 2017 and December 28th, 2024, the breach could include information such as name, date of birth, gender, health card number, home address, phone numbers, residency status, and medical information. Information about students’ emergency contacts may also have been impacted.
The incident may also have exposed historical information for students who attended a TDSB school between September 1985 and August 2017, which could include name, date of birth, gender, health card number, home address and phone numbers.
PowerSchool said it received confirmation that the data acquired by the unauthorized user was deleted and not posted online. However, the TDSB says it’s taking the breach seriously and working with PowerSchool to prevent similar incidents in the future.
Moreover, the Star notes that PowerSchool is working with credit reporting agency Experian to provide two years of complimentary identity protection services and credit monitoring services to students and staff whose data was compromised.
TDSB is one of at least 20 Ontario school boards that have contacted the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario about potential breaches related to PowerSchool. Below is a list of all the school boards that have contacted the privacy commissioner:
- Toronto District School Board
- Peel District School Board
- Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board
- Lakehead District School Board
- Wellington Catholic District School Board
- York Region District School Board
- Brant Haldimand Norfolk Catholic District School Board
- Near North District School Board
- Northwest Catholic District School Board
- Northeastern Catholic District School Board
- Rainy River District School Board
- Durham District School Board
- Keewatin-Patricia District School Board
- Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board
- Halton Catholic District School Board
- Superior North Catholic District School Board
- London District Catholic School Board
- Simcoe Muskoka Catholic District School Board
- Ottawa Catholic School Board
- Superior-Greenstone District School Board
Image credit: Shutterstock
Source: Toronto Star
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