Chad Klimack reports:
Southwest Licking Local Schools is alerting parents to a data breach that could involve the release of student information, including names, addresses and even Social Security numbers.
The breach could affect up to 113 students, Southwest Licking Superintendent Robert Jennell said.
Southwest Licking officials are notifying all potentially impacted families via letter. In addition, the district posted an alert on its website on May 19.
The district became aware of the data breach on April 14, Jennell said.
“We had a student report another student had information a student shouldn’t have,” Jennell said.
A subsequent investigation revealed the high school student had accessed fellow students’ personal data through the district’s computer network and a shared server at the Licking Area Computer Association, Jennell said.
Read more on Newark Advocate. A statement posted yesterday on the school district’s web site says:
SWL NOTIFIES FAMILIES OF STUDENT INFORMATION SECURITY INCIDENT
The District immediately notified the Licking County Sheriff’s Department and has been working with the Sheriff and information technology professionals collaboratively to identify the nature and extent of the incident. Through this collaborative effort, the individual responsible for the incident has been identified.
Approximately 113 students are affected by this incident. In those cases, the name of the student, parent, address, and in some cases, the social security number, was compromised. The Southwest Licking School District is committed to protecting the privacy and personal information of every one of our students. We are treating this as a very serious situation, and therefore, we are notifying all potentially impacted families by letter. In addition, the School District has contracted with a breach response service to provide all affected families with fraud services at no charge. In addition to assisting affected families, we have been reviewing our current security protocols and will be adding additional security measures.
Due to ongoing law enforcement investigations, we are limited in the information that we can provide.