[SoDu Alert] Durham Schools Among Those Affected by Data Breach

A PowerSchool contract employee's credentials were breached in December, leading to unauthorized access to student and teacher data.

According to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, the Dec. 19 cybersecurity incident affected PowerSchool's "global client base" and wasn't isolated to this state.

Durham Public Schools uses PowerSchool to track student grades, assignments, and other information.

"At this time, we cannot confirm whether any individual's data from Durham Public Schools has been compromised," stated an email from the school district. "We are in contact with NCDPI to determine if and how this incident might impact our district and are actively monitoring the situation."

NCDPI reports that the threat has been contained and that accessed data was destroyed and "no additional copies exist." CrowdStrike, a third-party cybersecurity company, is working with PowerSchool on a full incident report.

"It is important to stress that there is nothing that NCDPI or any of our schools could have done to avoid this cybersecurity incident," the state public instruction agency stated in its release. "Neither our schools nor DPI have administrative access to the maintenance tunnel where the breach occurred."

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