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State, vendor: No student data breach on college, career planning sites connected to TN schools
From: Destry Winant <destry () riskbasedsecurity com>
Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2019 08:59:09 -0500
https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/education/2019/09/04/no-student-data-breach-college-career-planning-sites-connected-tn-schools/2213923001/ No Tennessee student data was compromised last month when an unauthorized party accessed a state vendor's web site, an investigation has found. In July, Graduation Alliance, a third-party state vendor providing data and web hosting services to schools across the state, reported a possible data breach to servers that contained some student information. Graduation Alliance hosts CollegeforTN.org, a college and career-planning website. On Wednesday, Graduation Alliance and the Tennessee Higher Education Commission announced the completed investigation found no student data had been exposed and that a technical breach had not occurred. Graduation Alliance had suspected one because of unusual traffic on some servers. “Immediately after determining a possible breach had occurred, our agency, working with the website vendor and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, launched an inquiry focused on ensuring the privacy of Tennessee students,” said THEC Executive Director Mike Krause in a statement. “We are, of course, relieved that the inquiry indicated no student data was taken and want to thank the TBI, the Attorney General and the state’s Strategic Technology Solutions team for their assistance throughout this process.” The data stored on the servers under review did not include Social Security numbers, financial, driver’s license or health information but did include names, birthdays, gender, ethnicity and, on a smaller batch of records, ACT scores. Graduation Alliance had removed website access and hired an independent forensics firm. "We are grateful for the diligent and swift actions that our team took to intercept this attack," the company said in a statement. "Protecting the privacy and security of our students' and customers' information is a top priority. As we move forward, we will continue to look for opportunities to enhance our cybersecurity and data protection strategy.” _______________________________________________ BreachExchange mailing list sponsored by Risk Based Security BreachExchange () lists riskbasedsecurity com If you wish to Edit your membership or Unsubscribe you can do so at the following link: https://lists.riskbasedsecurity.com/listinfo/breachexchange
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- State, vendor: No student data breach on college, career planning sites connected to TN schools Destry Winant (Sep 06)