Schools affected by a cybersecurity incident

The cybersecurity incident which affects hundreds of schools across North America does not spare Alberta, where educational establishments, and in particular French schools, have reported a breach of their students’ data.

The intrusion follows a breach in PowerSchoola data management software that many schools in North America use to store a certain amount of information about their students.

On Wednesday, Alberta schools sent a note to inform parents.

The letter they received from the company PowerSchool indicates that an investigation determined thatan unauthorized party gained access to certain PowerSchool Student Information System customer data using a compromised credential.

The personal data that has been the subject of intrusive access concerns in particular the names of the students, their date of birth, their address and their telephone number.

We regret to inform you that your data has been accessed.

Edmonton Catholic Schools and the Saint-Albert Public Schools Division are among the affected establishments. We understand that such news can be destabilizing, and we want to assure you that we are doing everything in our power to responsibly address the situation. wrote the latter.

French-speaking schools in the mix

The FrancoSud school board, which serves southern Alberta, and the Conseil scolaire Centre-Nord (CSCN), which covers a large part of the province and notably the Edmonton region, have both indicated that they have been affected by the ‘incident.

In his information note addressed to parents of students Wednesday afternoon, the CSCN said he was informed by PowerScool that the incident was circumscribed and that it did not anticipate the data being shared or made public.

The company also said there would be no “financial harm suffered by those affected.”

Both school boards will contact parents and their employees if there is any new information about the incident.

For their part, the Center-East and North-West school boards indicated that they were not affected by the computer incident since they do not use the same data management software.

Incident “controlled”

PowerSchoolan American provider of cloud computing software, claims to have taken all appropriate measures to prevent further unauthorized access or misuse of the data concerned.

The company also says it continues to provide services to its customers as usual while continuing to investigate the data breach.

We take our responsibility to protect student data privacy very seriously and to act responsibly as data controllers.

Elsewhere in the country, district school boards in Toronto, Peel and Durham, Ontario, have issued advisories regarding a cyberattack targeting PowerSchool.

The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador also reported an incident affecting K-12 facilities^e year.

With information from The Canadian Press