San Diego Unified School District notified families of students of yet another cybersecurity incident. It's an issue ABC 10News has covered before, where l0cal school districts are targeted in these breaches. But a local experts says it could be a growing and concerning trend for parents, staff and most of all, students.
In an e-mail to parents Tuesday, officials stated:
"We have been informed that some student data from our district and other districts was downloaded by an unauthorized user, and an analysis is being done by PowerSchool on the type of information accessed."
Families of nearly 99,000 students were notified. The district told ABC 10News the situation has been contained and actions were taken to prevent the information from being used. However, the action itself leaves concerns.
Aaron Wyant, the President of Dispatch Tech says there are so many different ways that hackers can get into systems. And it's a growing trend to target K-12 schools.
"The schools are an easy target. With big companies, you know, usually are easier," says Wyant. "The bigger your company is, the more vulnerabilities you're going to have, you know, more access, more software in place, you know, people are accessing your networks from all types of locations."
Once that access is gained, he says it's scary where it could end up.
"What a hacker might do is they'll take that data and they'll actually sell it on the dark web," he says. "They'll get hundreds of dollars, you know, or thousands of dollars for all these names and Social Security numbers and it's no fun once it gets there."
This isn't the first time San Diego Unified has been targeted.
Back in 2022, thousands of families information put at risk after a cyber security threat hit the school district.
"They're attacking schools all over the country," Sai Huda,the CEO of Cybercatch told ABC 10News back in 2022.
Also back in 2018, the district revealed a phishing attack, which put hundreds of thousands of students and staff's personal information at risk. While districts have upped the ante when it comes to protection, Wyant says safety is never fully guarantee on the web.
"Well something like this, no one's ever 100% safe," he explains. "I mean, you're working with a lot of vendors and each vendor is going to have its own little issues and Some can't afford high-end cybersecurity software, or they don't know where to get it."
