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Penncrest superintendent alerts community to PowerSchool data breach
Summary
Superintendent Ford told the board that a breach at PowerSchool’s support portal (PowerSource) may have exposed contact and some personal identifiable information; district advises families to await official school communications and said investigators and CrowdStrike are involved.
Superintendent Ford told the Penncrest Board of School Directors at its Jan. 13 meeting that the district was notified of a cybersecurity incident involving PowerSchool, the third-party student information system the district uses. Ford said the breach affected a PowerSchool support portal called PowerSource and not the district’s own servers, but that district records stored in PowerSchool could be impacted.
"This is their system. Our data is in their system in the cloud, if you will," Superintendent Ford said. He said district officials and law enforcement are working with cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike and PowerSchool as the vendor’s investigation continues.
Ford said two categories of information were affected: basic contact data and potential personally identifiable information. He warned families to ignore and not respond to unsolicited communications that may arrive, and said, "Please, do not respond to any direct communications or notifications that you may receive from PowerSchool about this incident. All official communications will come from our school district." The district posted a letter on its website and said it will provide updates as the investigation develops.
Ford also said PowerSchool services were operating and that the district took internal precautionary steps, including password changes. He said PowerSchool will offer services once the vendor’s investigation is complete and that the district will determine additional actions after reviewing investigation results.
