More than 5,000 Students' Personal Information Exposed in Data Breach
Floyd County Schools (FCS) in Georgia has experienced a data security incident. Students’ first and last names were accessed. In some of the cases, birthdates were also exposed during this incident. A small number of staff members’ names and email addresses were also exposed.
"Further identifying information was not revealed and has not been compromised," the press release says. Pearson Clinical Assessment’s program—AIMSweb—is involved in the incident.
“This incident impacts 5,900 students enrolled at FCS and 500 FCS employees who were AIMSWeb users between 2008 and 2015. The information Pearson reported was limited to basic directory information,” said FCS Executive Director of Technology Craig Ellison. “Regardless of how limited in nature the data was, this is not acceptable by FCS standards of security. Although this happened via a former data contractor, we want to ensure all of our stakeholders that we take data security seriously whether in-house or with a data contractor.”
Pearson is offering access to credit monitoring services for any individual who believes they may be impacted.
“This is a third-party data incident that did not occur on FCS' servers. Please reference the links Pearson provided for more details,” Ellison continued. “Because the data is old and not specific enough, it would be very difficult to determine who exactly has been impacted. After reviewing Georgia Code with our legal advisor, we determined we would use mass communication, such as print media and our website, to notify as many stakeholders as possible.”
Looking for a reprint of this article?
From high-res PDFs to custom plaques, order your copy today!
