Christopher Brown reports:
PowerSchool Holdings Inc. is facing three federal lawsuits alleging the education software provider negligently failed to protect the personal information of students, parents, and teachers that was exposed in a December data breach.
Sheilah Buack-Shelton, Tyler Baker, and Kimberly Kinney alleged in separate complaints that PowerSchool breached its duties under common law, contract law, industry standards, and the Federal Trade Commission Act to implement reasonable and adequate data security measures and provide timely notice of the breach.
Information exposed in the incident includes names, addresses, Social Security numbers, contact information, medical and financial information, student grades and grade-point averages, bus-stop information, and employment information, according to complaints filed Jan. 8-9 in the US District Court for the Eastern District of California.
[…]
The cases are Buack-Shelton v. PowerSchool Holdings Inc., E.D. Cal., No. 2:25-at-00037, complaint filed 1/8/25, Baker v. PowerSchool Holdings Inc., E.D. Cal., No. 2:25-at-00040, complaint filed 1/9/25, and Kinney v. PowerSchool Holdings Inc., E.D. Cal., No. 2:25-at-00042, complaint filed 1/9/25.
Read more at Bloomberg Law.
School districts aren’t off the hook. They had every opportunity to assess the vendor’s security practices prior to purchase.
Schools make plenty of mistakes in regards to their on line security measures. If a school did review the vendor’s security practices, then would they even know the first thing to look for? My guess is no. Schools pay for protection in the cost of using PowerSchool and need to be able to trust that businesses are doing what they say they are. Schools have enough on their plates. They should not have to worry about a third party vendor protecting their data in which the same company claims to do so.
PowerSchool is the biggest SIS by far globally it’s not even close. There isn’t anyone else to vet they’re the most expensive and most “secure.” You’re simply ignorant if you think local districts had anything to do with their negligence.
Ever think they’ve lied about their security and obfuscated for years?
I’ve never seen a request for proposal application that answered “no” on MFA for ANY vendor this day and time . The fact it wasn’t on in this case and the firewall settings – it’s nearly incriminating for PowerSchool. As an NSE I’m respectfully telling you, your local district IT and staff had absolutely NOTHING to do with this breach.
You say districts shouldn’t have to concern themselves with all the data they are collecting on children without parent consent because “too busy”. Districts absolutely must maintain and protect the data of minors…the full lifecycle of child education data including acquisition, retention and destruction of data and who has access. This is a matter of national citizen privacy protection rights. Failure to protect minors from harmful actors is complete negligence. Districts must do much more than just know how to open a support ticket. They invited in the technology..funded by my taxdollars.
Now I totally agree with the parental consent thing. I wasn’t aware this was happening before all this, but I’m not the SIS manager. Obviously. Network Security is my hat and it’s a shame it’s happening and still happening as we speak. PowerSchool should have to cease its selling data nonsense – they’ve lost that privilege unequivocally now. And forever, in my opinion. Especially since it can all be de-anonymized now. Then crossed and de-anonymized with transaction data or anything else that data miners can get their hands on.