SALAMANCA — The Salamanca City Central School District was one of the 13,000 schools and universities recently hacked with a data breach to Pearson Education, district officials reported last week.
At the Board of Education meeting Sept. 3, Rob Miller, the district’s director of information technology and information systems, updated the board on what happened and the actions taken in the aftermath of the breach.
On Aug. 7, the Western New York Regional Information Center (WNYRIC) and Pearson contact the district concerning the data breach, Miller explained. Salamanca schools use the student assessment program AIMSweb, which is owned by Pearson.
“They had the names of 700 students, but they had no other information,” he said. “This breach could have been any data from 2004 up until we were done with the AIMSWeb version 1.0.”
Miller said AIMSweb and Pearson reported that none of the breached information has been misused, according to their legal counsel and cybersecurity experts.
“The information is what we called directory information, so that’s identifiable information,” he said. “They haven’t found it anywhere and haven’t found it being used for anything.”
Miller said no Social Security numbers, birthdays, home addresses, emails or student IDS were acquired during the breach.
Pearson discovered the breach March 19, Miller said. In the following months, Pearson worked with cybersecurity experts to determine what data was breached, what to do next and how to fix the problem, which led to improving Pearson’s security, Miller said.
“We were notified by BOCES and Pearson of any unauthorized releases,” he explained. “Then we were required by law to notify parents, staff members and students who could have been affected.”
Miller said the district worked with Pearson on how to go about notifying the affected peop ..
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