HINESBURG, Vt. (WCAX) – Vermont student and teacher data was compromised in a cyberattack that targeted a major provider of school software.
According to a letter sent to families in the Champlain Valley School District, data was compromised at most Vermont schools.
The program affected is called PowerSchool which is used to track things like attendance, enrollment and finances.
The information breached varies by school, but included both student and teacher data, like Social Security numbers, other personally identifiable information and medical information.
PowerSchool says it paid the hackers to delete any acquired data in the hopes it will not be shared or abused.
We reached out to the Vermont Agency of Education for a comment but had not yet heard back when this story was published.
Meanwhile, servers within the Addison Northwest School District were impacted by a separate cybersecurity incident that targeted district servers.
At this time, the district does not have confirmation on what– if any– information was compromised.
The internet is currently down at district offices, but so far, student instruction has not been impacted.
They are working with cybersecurity experts to assess the situation and secure their systems. They hope to have more information on system restoration in the next few days.
The Addison Northwest superintendent says that the district was also affected by the cybersecurity incident affecting PowerSchool.
School officials tell us they do not believe the two incidents are connected and are still assessing the situation.