Southwestern Central School District recently was notified it was affected by a PowerSchool cybersecurity incident involving unauthorized exfiltration of personal data  from certain Student Information System environments via PowerSource, one of its community-focused customer support portals.

PowerSchool, which provides cloud-based software to K-12 schools, indicates an unauthorized party gained access to customer data using a compromised set of credentials from one of its support engineers. PowerSchool became aware of the incident December 28, 2024.

PowerSchool has assured Southwestern CSD it conducted a review via its third-party cybersecurity experts. It engaged CrowdStrike, a leading cybersecurity expert, for a thorough investigation. It has no evidence that other PowerSchool products were affected as a result of this incident, or that there is any malware or continued unauthorized activity in the PowerSchool environment. 

Information related to current and former students and educators involved included one or more of the following, which varied by person: name, contact information, date of birth, limited medical alert information, Social Security Number/Social Insurance Number, and other related information. PowerSchool says it has no evidence that credit card or banking information was involved.

PowerSchool says it is taking further steps to strengthen the security of its systems and has informed Southwestern it will provide complimentary credit identity protection services including, if applicable, credit monitoring services, for those involved.

PowerSchool is coordinating with Experian and TransUnion to provide notice on behalf of its United States customers whose information was involved and for whom it had available contact information.

Please visit https://www.powerschool.com/security/sis-incident/ for more information.

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to send a message to our Information Technology Department at mmoore@swcsk12.org.