GUELPH – The Wellington Catholic District School Board was one of the boards across Ontario and North America that experienced a data breach between Dec. 22 and 28.
Incident impacted PowerSchool, the application used by WCDSB to store a range of student information and a limited amount of school-based staff information.
On Jan. 7 PowerSchool notified WCDSB of the breach, and the board made a statement on its website on Jan. 9.
“Our Cyber Incident Response Team promptly activated our response plan, taking immediate steps to ensure that our critical systems remain operational,” officials state.
“We are working with PowerSchool to thoroughly investigate the incident and determine its full scope.”
“While PowerSchool has confirmed that the data accessed by an unauthorized user has been deleted and no copies of this data were posted online, we are continuing to assess the specific information that may have been accessed or exported from the application.”
Board officials say they notified the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario about the breach “out of an abundance of caution.”
“We are working with PowerSchool to learn more about what has occurred and will share further information once it has been received.”
Board officials stated they had no more information to share at that time, given the ongoing investigation into the occurrence.
During a school board meeting on Jan. 13, director Micheal Glazier said there were still no updates he could share.
“We will continue to update staff and our Wellington Catholic DSB community as more information becomes available,” officials state.
Glazier said these updates would be shared on the board website.