Student, staff data across several Massachusetts school districts compromised in nationwide breach

STOUGHTON, Mass. — A nationwide data breach on Wednesday compromised student and staff information across several Massachusetts school districts.

PowerSchool, a California-based software company that provides cloud-based education software to schools across North America, was the victim of a cybersecurity attack that potentially affected millions of users, according to officials.

Servers in districts such as Stoughton, Westford, Needham, and Canton were affected, although the total number of schools remains unknown, officials noted.

The extent of student and staff information compromised in the breach wasn’t immediately clear.

“This news, and the delay in which it was reported to us, is extremely concerning,” said a Stoughton Public Schools spokesperson. “PowerSchool held a webinar with impacted districts this afternoon and we are currently awaiting more information from PowerSchool about this incident.”

Westford Public Schools said that PowerSchool informed its customers that it does not anticipate the data being shared or made public, and they believe it has been deleted without any further replication or dissemination.

The New Hampshire Department of Education also confirmed to Boston 25 that there are many Granite State districts that contract with PowerSchool and that educators are closely monitoring the situation.

“All cybersecurity incidents are taken very seriously, especially those that could potentially involve student data,” a NHDOE spokesperson said in a statement.

In a statement, PowerSchool said in part, “We have taken all appropriate steps to prevent the data involved from further unauthorized access or misuse. The incident is contained and we do not anticipate the data being shared or made public. PowerSchool is not experiencing, nor expects to experience, any operational disruption and continues to provide services as normal to our customers.”

The cause of the breach remains under investigation.

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