[BreachExchange] Minnesota School District's Hacked Email Causes Concern

[Terrell Byrd]

https://www.govtech.com/education/k-12/minnesota-school-district-email-hacked-causes-concern


(TNS) — A District 518 employee's email was hacked and an investigation is
underway to determine whether any data was compromised.

"At this point we don't anticipate it to be a major data breach or a large
issue, but we're trying to ensure we do our due diligence on checking,"
said Superintendent John Landgaard, following a Monday meeting of the
District 518 Board of Education's Instructional Committee.

The security breach was first discovered about a week and a half ago, and
the Southwest West Central Service Co-Op is investigating, Landgaard said.

If any sensitive data was released, notifications will be sent to parents
of any students involved.

As of Monday, however, preliminary indications were that the hackers seemed
to have used the hacked email account to send more emails out rather than
taking any data from it.

How the account was hacked remained unclear.

"It wasn't necessarily an employee error," Landgaard said. "At this point
I'm waiting for more info."

It was also unclear on Monday how many students' data or what type of data
might have been involved. One thing that couldn't have been leaked,
however, was students' social security numbers, as the school doesn't have
those.

More information on the security issue could be available within the next
week.

"We don't believe there's a huge data risk at this point," Landgaard said.
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