Steve Silva reports:
Halifax Regional Centre for Education (HRCE) has shut down registration for its Excel program due to a “privacy breach,” the organization tweeted Monday morning.
“The issue has been contained. We are currently investigating. Will share more info as it becomes known,” read part of the tweet from the organization, which was formally the Halifax Regional School Board.
Read more on Global News. See also The Star/Halifax.
Karen Yi reports:
In the age of online shopping, computer hacks and data breaches, identity theft is not necessarily a shock. But, you’re probably not expecting to get an email listing portions of your colleagues’ social security numbers.
But, in the Irvington school district, that’s exactly what happened.
Partial social security numbers of more than 1,200 employees at Irvington schools were distributed via email on Monday to an unknown number of recipients, according to the school district.
Read more on NJ.com.
Eugenia Estes reports:
Annual state-mandated assessment testing did not get off to the best start this week for many systems, including Greene County Schools, due to what is being investigated as a cyber attack on the company that handles online TN Ready testing for the state.
Although there were some disruptions to the testing for some students in Greene County Schools on Monday and Tuesday, testing did continue and students were able to finish their exams, according to Julia Lamons, data supervisor for the district.
Read the full report on Greenville Sun.
Regular readers may recall that Questar was mentioned on this site earlier this year when they had a breach that affected a number of schools in Mississippi and New York. Although it has not been confirmed that Questar was attacked this past week, from the reporting on the Greenville Sun, it does sound like it is likely.
Update: So, it’s more than just Tennessee, it seems. I’m still getting caught up with news, but it appears that seven states may have been impacted, including New York, South Dakota, Mississippi, and Missouri. Two other states were not as “negatively affected.”
So clearly there needs to be a deep investigation into what happened and how the vendor can prevent a recurrence of the problem.
Caley Ramsay reports:
Upwards of 700 former participants, volunteers and youth leaders of Camp fYrefly may have had their personal information compromised, according to the University of Alberta.
An internal investigation found a former employee with the for Sexual Minority Studies and Services (iSMSS) Camp fYrefly downloaded and shared personal information about some camp participants, volunteers, youth leaders and facilitators in violation of university policy, the U of A said in a media release on Thursday.
Fox47 reports:
An attack on Ingham Intermediate School District’s online network and the person police say is responsible was one of its own students. The incident happened in February 2017.
On Wednesday FOX 47’s Alani Letang learned more on that student, who now faces criminal charges after shutting down the district’s internet servers.
Police say 19-year old Brandon Barlett targeted the district in a ransomware attack. That attack didn’t put students or staff in danger but did affect the day to day operations of the school district.
“A couple hours in the morning a couple in the afternoon over a period of ten days is between 30-40 hours that the internet was down. The impact of teaching and learning of students and the productivity of our school employees,” said Scott Koenigsknecht- Ingham Intermediate School District Superintendent
Read more on Fox47.