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In January, Illuminate Education, a taxpayer-funded software company that tracks grades and attendance for the New York City Department of Education, was targeted, resulting in the data of approximately 820,000 students being made available.
Specifically, officials said that the hackers gained access to students’ names, birthdays, ethnicities, English-speaking, special-education, teacher schedules, and free-lunch statuses, though information including social security numbers and family financial information were never collected and thus not subjected to the hackers.
According to the Education Department, which only disclosed the hack as of Friday, March 25, it could be the largest-ever breach of student data in US history, as the data dated back to the 2016-2017 school year.
The breach prompted a weekslong shutdown of grading and attendance systems in January, officials said, causing confusion at city schools amid a time when the school system was already stretched thin due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We are outraged that Illuminate represented to us and schools that legally required, industry-standard critical safeguards were in place when they were not,” Chancellor David Banks told The New York Post, while calling for city, state, and federal investigations.
Anyone impacted by the breach has been or will be notified by the Department of Education.
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