Ontario’s French public college board says a cyberattack that disrupted cellphone and web companies additionally resulted in a breach of non-public data affecting all its college students in addition to present and former workers.
On Nov. 14, Conseil scolaire Viamonde mentioned {that a} hack on Oct. 17 resulted within the publicity of data together with social insurance coverage numbers and mailing addresses for individuals who labored for the board between 2002 and 2024.
The board, which has places of work in Toronto and Welland, Ont., mentioned it’s going to present affected staff with two years of credit score monitoring companies.
The hack additionally affected all present college students, the board mentioned in an e-mail to oldsters and guardians, and in a press release on its web site.
The board operates 57 elementary and secondary colleges across the province, together with École élémentaire Pavillon de la jeunesse and École secondaire Georges- P.-Vanier in Hamilton, École élémentaire Renaissance in Burlington and École secondaire Franco-Niagara in Welland.
College students’ names, birthdays, attendance data and faculty registration quantity had been among the many data cybercriminals could have accessed, the board mentioned.
The board additionally supplied an inventory of faculty years by which former college students of particular colleges could have additionally been affected. Conseil scolaire Viamonde mentioned it’s not offering credit score monitoring to college students as a result of individuals underneath 18 are ineligible, and college students’ publicity was extra restricted than that of workers.
The board mentioned on its web site there was no indication that college students’ dwelling addresses had been uncovered.
The hack triggered a cellphone and web outage throughout the board for a number of days, a spokesperson informed CBC Hamilton in an e-mail, however emails and different functions had been usable utilizing exterior web connections.
The spokesperson mentioned in the course of the outage “studying continued with minimal to no disruptions” in school rooms.
The board spokesperson declined to say how the assault occurred, saying “as soon as the investigation is full and we’ve got a greater understanding of what has occurred, we are going to develop a technique to strengthen our cybersecurity.”
They didn’t reply to questions on what number of college students and workers in Hamilton and Niagara had been affected, nor if the attackers requested for a ransom to be paid.
