Education Sector

Our Lady of the Lake hit by cyberattack; victims say hackers got Social Security and other data

Eric Killelea reports: A cyberattack on Our Lady of the Lake University’s computer network compromised personal data on its faculty, students and even individuals who applied to the university but never attended. The private Catholic university on San Antonio’s West Side this week confirmed that it recently found evidence that “unauthorized access” to its network occurred about Aug....

Shoreline College website hacked; officials investigating

Monica Velez reports: A ransomware attack has forced the majority of Shoreline Community College students and staff to transition to remote work until further notice, officials confirmed Thursday. Local and federal officials are investigating. Although Shoreline’s campus remains open, the website is down and Wi-Fi on campus is inaccessible. The Parent Child Center remains open. Classes...

NYC Special Needs Students’ Records Found Exposed on Web

Marianne Kolbasuk McGee reports: Tens of thousands of documents containing personal information of special education students within New York City’s public school system were held in an unsecured database exposed to the internet. Researcher Jeremiah Fowler of security services firm Security Discovery told Information Security Media Group he found the unsecured database in mid-February...

Attack on WB CTC targeted financial info in Skyward system

Update:  BlackCat has claimed responsibility for the attack. There’s an update to the data breach affecting Wilkes-Barre Career and Technical Center, previously noted on this site. Mark Guydish reports: Guariglia said the FBI is still investigating and that there is no new information on what happened or who conducted the attack, which appeared to...

Schools are ‘target rich’ for cyberattacks, fed agency helps fight back

Kayla J. Dunn reports: Schools have a lot of information — and not just the educational kind. Social security numbers, addresses, staff members’ banking information, the list goes on. That data is stored digitally, and schools are increasingly a prime target for cybercriminals seeking to steal the sensitive information. A 2022 report on cybersecurity attacks...

Wilkes-Barre Career and Technical Center averts catastrophe from cyberattack

They could have headlined this story as “Good security practices pay off.” Michael P. Buffer reports: A cyber attack on a server at the Wilkes-Barre Career and Technical Center was discovered Wednesday, and antivirus and backup procedures “prevented a catastrophe” and “a lot of problems,” Administrative Director Anthony C. Guariglia said Thursday. The regional...

Highly sensitive files from Berkeley County Schools dumped by ransomware gang

In early February, Berkeley County Schools in West Virginia experienced a ransomware attack.  On March 3, the district issued a notice on its website that stated their investigation determined “some data stored in Berkeley County Schools’ network may have been accessed that included employee Social Security numbers and direct deposit information.” That notice makes...

UNC data leak exposes more than 1,000 Social Security numbers

WRAL reports: A data leak at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has exposed more than 1,000 Social Security numbers. The university said human error played a role in tax forms that were sent to the wrong people. The leak happened in late January. It included names, addresses, Social Security numbers and...

SEC Charges Software Company Blackbaud Inc. for Misleading Disclosures About Ransomware Attack That Impacted Charitable Donors

Washington D.C., March 9, 2023 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Blackbaud Inc., a South Carolina-based public company that provides donor data management software to non-profit organizations, agreed to pay $3 million to settle charges for making misleading disclosures about a 2020 ransomware attack that impacted more than 13,000 customers. The...