New York law requires any third-party contractor with access to student data to encrypt the student data “at rest and in motion,” O’Hare said, citing Education Law §2-d and Commissioner of Education regulations 8 NYCRR §§ 121.3 (c)(6) and 121.9(a)(7). The department is investigating whether Illuminate was meeting data protection standards required under state law - standards it contractually agreed to with its clients within the state, NYSED said. Each impacted district was working to confirm how many current and former students were among those whose data were compromised, and each is required by law to report those totals to NYSED, so the total number of students affected was expected to grow, the department said. The list of all New York schools impacted by the data breach was sent to THE Journal in response to a Freedom of Information request NYSED officials said the list came from Illuminate.
The New York State Education Department on May 5 told THE Journal that 567 schools in the state - including “at least” 1 million current and former students - were among those impacted by the Illuminate data breach, and NYSED data privacy officials opened an investigation on April 1. Hard-Hit New York Responds with Investigation of Illuminate
#Illuminate education software#
The company’s website states that its software products serve over 5,000 schools nationally with a total enrollment of about 17 million U.S. The incident resulted in a week-long outage of all Illuminate’s K–12 school solutions, including IO Classroom (previously named Skedula), PupilPath, EduClimber, IO Education, SchoolCity, and others, according to its service status site. Illuminate has told THE Journal that the breach was discovered after it began investigating suspicious access to its systems in early January. Three Connecticut districts and one in California have also published data breach notifications to parents. Within recent weeks, eight school districts in Colorado with total current enrollment of about 136,700 have alerted parents that current and former students were involved in the breach. Many districts and schools have said in their notification letters that current as well as former students had their private information compromised. The Illuminate data breach is, thus far, known to have impacted nearly 2 million current students including more than 820,000 in New York City alone.
The district email said OKCPS “does not have any details about this incident or the investigation” and shared a phone number for an Illuminate Education “dedicated call center” for those potentially impacted by the data breach and encouraged parents with questions to contact the call center at (833) 749-1673.
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The email was first reported by Oklahoma City Free Press over the weekend and was confirmed by THE Journal today with OKCPS officials.
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“Illuminate has assured us that they are taking all necessary steps with the assistance of their IT staff and a team of third-party computer specialists to investigate this incident,” OKCPS’ email to parents said, adding that Illuminate was mailing letters to parents of impacted students with more information on the incident and how to protect students from identity theft. The letter does not specify what type of private student data was compromised most other impacted districts have said in their notifications that the breach did not include Social Security numbers. On Friday, May 13, OKCPS emailed parents and staff members to alert them that “certain information belonging to OKCPS that was in Illuminate’s possession” may have been breached during the January cyberattack targeting Illuminate. Oklahoma City Public Schools has added its 34,000 students to the growing list of those impacted by the Illuminate Education data breach that occurred during a January cyberattack - the first in Oklahoma known to have been among the K–12 schools and districts whose private student data was compromised within Illuminate’s systems. K-12 Cybersecurity News Illuminate Data Breach Spreads to Fifth State as Oklahoma City Notifies ParentsĮditor's Note: THE Journal has published an updated list of all K–12 schools nationwide known to be impacted by the Illuminate Education data breach.