Scott Travis reports: Hackers who demanded up to $40 million from the Broward School District have now published nearly 26,000 files stolen from district servers. An initial review by the South Florida Sun Sentinel found a few isolated incidents where confidential student or employee information was released, but none that contained Social Security numbers. The…
Category: Education Sector
School system mistakenly releases names of students, staff with COVID
Jim McConnell reports: The local school system failed to properly redact personal information from a document requested through the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, inadvertently releasing to a parent last week the names of all Chesterfield County Public Schools students and employees who have reported testing positive for COVID-19. Chesterfield resident Grace Olsen, the mother…
UK: University of Hertfordshire still hobbled by ransomware attack
Slightly more than one year after it managed to avoid an investigation by the ICO over its data protection practices, the University of Hertfordshire joined the ranks of the many educational institutions crippled by a ransomware attack. The attack reportedly occurred on April 14, and was reported on April 15. As of today, the university…
NY State Comptroller DiNapoli Releases School District Audits
New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli announced school district audits this week. Here are the summaries with links to the audit reports: Hudson City School District – Information Technology (Columbia County) District officials did not adequately secure and protect its information technology (IT) systems against unauthorized use, access and loss. The board and district…
Swinburne University confirms over 5,000 individuals affected in data breach
Asha Barbaschow reports: Swinburne University of Technology has confirmed personal information on staff, students, and external parties had inadvertently made its way into the wild. It said it was advised last month that information of around 5,200 Swinburne staff and 100 Swinburne students was available on the internet. Read more on ZDNet.
UK: Latest on ransomware attack on 24 schools near Bristol
Harris Federation is not the only school academy trust hit by ransomware recently. Also hit in March was the Castle School Education Trust (CSET). As reported by Bristol Live, that attack affected not only CSET’s seven schools but 17 others maintained by the local authority who relied on the academy group’s IT infrastructure. While no ransom…