WESTFORD — Town officials warned the Westford Public Schools community Wednesday of an apparent data breach which may have affected the district through an outside vendor.
The town said in an announcement on its website Wednesday the schools were informed by the provider of the district’s student information system, PowerSchool, of a breach that apparently took place in late December. The breach impacted data stored offsite from the district, and has affected other school districts using PowerSchool across the country.
“PowerSchool has assured the school administration that it is conducting a comprehensive and ongoing investigation and has contacted law enforcement as part of its response,” said the announcement by the town Wednesday. “Additionally, PowerSchool has implemented increased security measures to address vulnerabilities in their platform. PowerSchool has also informed its customers that it does not anticipate the data being shared or made public, and they believe it has been deleted without any further replication or dissemination.”
The town said PowerSchool is “actively investigating the causes and extent of the breach,” and updating school officials.
“The Town of Westford and Westford Public Schools are committed to the protection of students’, staff and families’ information,” said the town statement. “Although there is currently no evidence of impact to the district’s other systems, both school and town administrations remain proactive and vigilant, working closely with PowerSchool to monitor this matter and any further developments and ensure the continued security of all systems.”
A PowerSchool spokesperson said in a statement Thursday the company became aware of unauthorized access to its data through one of its customer portals, PowerSource.
“We have taken all appropriate steps to prevent the data involved from further unauthorized access or misuse,” said the PowerSchool spokesperson. “The incident is contained and we do not anticipate the data being shared or made public. PowerSchool is not experiencing, nor expects to experience, any operational disruption and continues to provide services as normal to our customers. 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.”
Westford Public Schools Superintendent Christopher Chew did not immediately return a request for comment Thursday morning.