PowerSchool, the largest provider of cloud-based educational software for K-12 education in the U.S., experienced a data security breach that may have compromised sensitive information of over 62 million students and 9.5 million teachers across more than 6,500 school districts. The incident, first detected on December 28, involved hackers exploiting compromised credentials to access data through the PowerSource support portal. Although PowerSchool did not confirm specific figures, the data breach affected numerous districts, exposing personal details including names, addresses, and in some cases, Social Security numbers and limited medical information.
Affected districts include the Memphis-Shelby School District, where the data of over 485,000 students and 54,000 teachers was exposed, as well as others across multiple states. PowerSchool has stated that it does not believe there is an ongoing risk and is providing resources to those affected, including offering two years of free identity protection and credit monitoring services. The company aims to learn from this incident and strengthen its security measures in the future.
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