Two school boards in the Greater Toronto Area, including Canada’s largest public school board, say the personal information of their students and some staff may have been exposed due to a “cyber incident.”
The incident involves PowerSchool, an application used to store a range of student information and some information about school-based staff, says an email to parents and caregivers sent by Toronto District School Board interim director of education Stacey Zucker on Wednesday.
The email says the application experienced a data breach between Dec. 22 to 28, 2024, and that the school board was informed about it on Tuesday.
At this point, the Toronto District School Board is still assessing what exact information may have been accessed, but PowerSchool has said that the data obtained by the unauthorized user has since been deleted and no copies were posted online, Zucker’s email says.
The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario has also been notified.
Durham District School Board sent out an email to parents and caregivers of its students, saying it was also impacted by the data breach, but that it was told by PowerSchool that none of its student or staff information was compromised.
A spokesperson for the Toronto District School Board said a message about the data breach was sent out to parents Wednesday and posted to the board’s website, but did not comment further.
CBC News has also reached out to Durham District School Board for comment.