PowerSchool Update

PowerSchool Update

Attention Parents and Guardians:

You may have heard on the news recently, and in the Palisades Patch, that some schools using PowerSchool (a student information system) reported a data breach.  After an investigation by our Technology Director, Mr. Adams, and our support and hosting team at Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit 21 (CLIU 21), a data breach has NOT been experienced at Palisades or any other school district where PowerSchool is hosted by CLIU 21. 

Here is the statement we received from PowerSchool when the incident was originally reported to us on January 7th:

“While this incident affected certain PowerSchool Student Information System customers, our thorough forensic investigation has confirmed that your organization’s data was not impacted. To note, our data analysis remains ongoing, and should our findings change, we will notify you in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.”

After receiving the aforementioned notice, both CLIU 21 and our Palisades IT team have taken the following steps to ensure that we have not been a victim of this data breach:

  1. Proactive checks to system audit logs were performed to detect anomalies in system access.

  2. User login reports were run to check for suspicious or unauthorized account access from locations outside of our area

  3. CLIU 21 has thoroughly reviewed their firewall logs for anomalies to determine any PowerSchool server access from locations that don’t normally access their servers.

  4. Remote support that would allow PowerSchool Group LLC to access our server is disabled by default.  The data breach occurred to some systems where remote support was enabled.  That is NOT the case with our district’s PowerSchool server, or any other PowerSchool server hosted by CLIU 21.

For more information released by PowerSchool regarding the incident that affected other  schools, please click here.  Along with CLIU 21, we will continue to closely monitor the situation.

Thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely,

Gary Adams

Director of Technology


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