A vendor for the Westport school system has informed school authorities its database has been hacked and offered the more than 5,000 students impacted free credit monitoring services.
An email today from Interim Superintendent of Schools David E. Abbey and Natalie Carrigan, director of technology, to parents followed up on a communication about the incident sent Wednesday.
They said the schools were informed on Monday by Pearson Clinical Assessment that Westport and many other districts use for “assessment services” that the breach occurred on or about Nov. 30, 2018 and the FBI alerted the company in mid-March.
“The district has been informed that the incident affected 5,084 students’ ‘directory information,’” the email said. “To help clarify, the ‘directory information’ was limited to first name, last name, and date of birth.”
The email said 13,000 schools and universities were affected by the breach. It said Pearson was providing credit monitoring services to students at no cost and outlined how students can sign up for the services.
“We would like to reiterate that we take the privacy of student information very seriously and expect our vendors to do the same,” the communication said.
“Since yesterday, many parents have followed-up with important questions via email and voice messages. We will post an FAQ on our website in the next day or so to address many of these questions.”
