Chicago Public Schools suffered a massive breach that exposed the data of nearly 500,000 students and 60,000 employees after vendor , Battelle for Kids, was hit by ransomware in December.
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Ohio-based Battelle for Kids is a nonprofit educational organization that analyzes student data shared by public school systems to design instructional models and evaluate teacher performance.
Battelle for Kids says it works with 267 school systems and its programs have reached over 2.8 million students.
Yesterday, the Chicago Public School District (CPS) revealed that a December 1 ransomware attack on Battelle for Kids exposed the stored data of 495,448 students and 56,138 employees in its school system.
According to CPS, the school system is working with Battelle for Kids to upload information and teacher evaluation data.
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CPS says the data stored on Battelle for Kids servers was for the 2015 to 2019 school years and revealed personal information and assessment scores.
“An unauthorized party gained access to your child’s name, date of birth, gender, grade, school, Chicago Public Schools student ID number, State student ID number, information about the courses the student took, and scores from performance tasks used for teacher evaluations during the 2015-2016, 2016-2017, 2017-2018, and/or 2018-2019 school years,” the CSF student data breach notification explains.
For staff, threat actors likely had access to their name, school, employee ID number, CPS email address, and Battelle for Kids username during the 2015-2016, 2016-2017, 2017-2018, and/or 2018-2019 school years.
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CPS says no Social Security numbers, home addresses, health data or financial information were exposed in the attack.
CPS is providing free credit monitoring and identity theft protection to any students or staff members. Instructions on how to access this free credit report can be found on the CPS data breach page created by the school system.
