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Several local school districts affected by PowerSchool data breach, tips to protect identity

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EL PASO COUNTY — A nationwide data breach targeting the company 'PowerSchool' has compromised information at several school districts in El Paso County, according to emails sent to parents from the districts.

News5 confirmed the breach affected Colorado Springs School District 11, Manitou Springs School District 14, and School District 49. All three school districts use a Student Information System (SIS) software provided by PowerSchool. PowerSchool said it became aware of the cybersecurity incident on Dec. 28 after an unauthorized user accessed certain information stored in their systems.

PowerSchool said it alerted school districts about the data breach on Jan. 7. A spokesperson for the company did not answer questions from News5 about why the company waited 10 days to alert customers. In a statement on its website, PowerSchool said "As soon as we learned of the incident, we immediately engaged our cybersecurity response protocols and mobilized a cross-functional response team, including senior leadership and third-party cybersecurity experts."

In an email sent to parents, School District 49 said student information including names, addresses, lunch status, birthdates, medical information, ethnicity, gender, grade level, and cumulative GPA was stolen, along with parent and emergency contact information.

Manitou Springs School District 14 told parents its compromised data primarily includes parent and student contact details, such as names and addresses. Colorado Springs School District 11 sent an email to parents that said "some data related to our students and teachers" was compromised but did not answer questions from News5 about what specific data.

Both D11 and D49 said they do not store student social security numbers in their systems, meaning there is no possibility they were compromised.

Charlie Marmon, a Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Coordinator for Colorado, said hackers often target school systems because of limited protections in place.

"They're target rich, they have a lot of data, and they're not necessarily the most well resourced organizations, so protecting themselves can be a real challenge," he said.

Marmon said bad actors are motivated to breach school information systems because of potential profit.

"They love to get that stuff because they can sell it in multiple different forms and make a lot of money. There's just a lot of data, and they can monetize it," he said. "They're going to take it and they're going to sell it to people who are going to use that information to steal your identity. In most cases, they're going to go and they're going to try and open up bank accounts or take out, take out a loan."

CISA said the following basic steps can help you to protect your identity on a daily basis:

-Keep device's operating system and applications up-to-date
-Use long, random, and unique passwords along with multi-factor authentication
-Block third-party cookies in browser settings
-Reboot devices weekly
-Only visit websites beginning with https://
-Be cognizant of what information you share about yourself online

For more tips on cybersecurity best practices, click here.



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