The Canadian Press

By The Canadian Press with files from Christian Oldale

Canadian school boards among those affected by cyber incident involving third party

Jan 9, 2025 | 3:37 PM

School boards in multiple provinces have been affected by a data breach involving software used by schools across North America to store student information.

Ontario’s Toronto, Peel and Durham district school boards issued similarly worded notices about a “cyber incident” targeting PowerSchool, a third-party application that’s also used to store some school-based staff information.

The notices say PowerSchool told school boards in Ontario and elsewhere on Tuesday that it had experienced a data breach between Dec. 22 and 28.

Officials in Ontario, Alberta, and Newfoundland and Labrador say they are working with PowerSchool to determine the extent of the breach.

PowerSchool, a U.S.-based provider of cloud software, says in a statement it has taken “all appropriate steps” to prevent further unauthorized access or misuse of the affected data.

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The company says the incident is “contained,” and it does not anticipate the data will be shared or made public.

In Lethbridge, the Holy Spirit Catholic School Division released the following statement:

Holy Spirit Catholic School Division has been informed of a cybersecurity incident involving PowerSchool, the system used for student and sta information. This event impacted user data across Canada and the United States. We are working with PowerSchool to determine the scope of the incident and any potential impact on our families and sta. PowerSchool has assured us that the incident is contained and that they have strengthened their security measures to prevent future breaches. PowerSchools operations remain unaected, and service continues as usual. We have been informed that there is no further risk regarding this incident. We want to assure you that no financial information was accessed or stored in PowerSchool.

The Lethbridge School Division and Palliser School Division have not been affected.

PowerSchool said it is providing services to its customers as usual as it continues to investigate the data breach.

“We take our responsibility to protect student data privacy and act responsibly as data processors extremely seriously,” it said in its statement.