Scott Lawrence reports:
The superintendent of schools for Beaumont Independent School District today announced that letters are being mailed to parents of nearly 15,000 of its 19,848 students to inform them of a potential breach of data that occurred recently. According to Dr. Carrol A. Thomas, the breach concerning confidential information that was placed on the staff server for principals to access was discovered Friday. The posted data was about potential student success on future state academic assessments. Inadvertently, private information–including the name, date of birth, gender, social security number, grade and scores on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) exam of students who were in the third through 11th grades during the 2009-2010 school year–were potentially exposed.
[…]
The information was posted last fall on the district’s staff site via a link that was intended to be available only to principals. However, last Thursday a student searching for his own information was able to tap into the file. On the next day, the student informed school officials of his ability to access the information and BISD officials moved swiftly and worked through today to assure the security of all BISD data.
Source: KFDM.