TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Thousands of teachers and students may be victims of a Leon County Schools data breach, according to school officials.
Florida Virtual School (FLVS) learned about a possible breach on Feb. 12 and contacted Leon County Schools, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Upon receiving the news, LCS immediately launched an internal investigation.
LCS says the data breach involves certain staff and student personal information from 2013.
The investigation by FLVS, while ongoing, estimates that approximately 368,000 students were potentially impacted by the incident. The security incident also included the personal information of approximately 1,867 teachers.
Additionally, FLVS has indicated that other student and teacher records may have been compromised from May 2016 to February 2018.
"Through the efforts of forensic experts, a FLVS misconfigured server was identified as the source of some of this compromised information. The data on this server was from a 2013 partnership between Leon County Schools and UCompass, subsequently purchased by FLVS. From this 2013 partnership, it was identified that some current and former teachers’ social security numbers were compromised. LCS has notified those affected current and former employees through traditional mail. While the FBI and FDLE investigations are ongoing, LCS has initiated personal identity protection, inclusive of credit monitoring, immediately for these affected parties."
Leon County Schools is in the process of directly notifying affected teachers and students. Although the investigations are on-going, they believe the scope of the breach may be substantial.
FLVS says the security incident may also affect a limited number of Leon County Schools’ teachers, where the teachers’ name, Social Security number, date of birth, address, phone number, cell phone number, emergency contact, spouse’s name, personal email address, work email address, and certain demographic information, may have been accessed by unauthorized persons.
"We are taking this matter very seriously," LCS school officials wrote in a press release. "We want to assure you that the privacy and security of the information in our care is one of our highest priorities."
As a precaution, FLVS is offering potentially impacted students one year of identity protection services through Experian, a leading identity monitoring services company, at no cost.
The offer is available to students whose information was in the FLVS database from May 2, 2016 to February 12, 2018.
Qualifying students or their parents can learn more and if impacted by the incident, can sign up for identity protection services at this website www.experianidworks.com/FLVS or by calling Experian at (888) 829-6553 and referencing engagement number DB05741.
