PowerSchool theft latest: Decades of Canadian student records, data from 40-plus US states feared stolen Canada's largest school board has revealed that student records dating back to 1985 may have been accessed by miscreants who compromised software provider PowerSchool. The Toronto District School Board, or TDSB, which serves about 240,000 students across 588 schools in the Toronto area, confirmed Monday that whoever broke into …
Where are the alert /sentinel records, like Aaron Arrdavark that tip of security instantly. It is a good outcome, but Google and Spamazon already know all this and more. I am just waiting for this humanless AI scanning of resumes to be leaked. Add to this unwanted, non-turn-offable AI scanning of emails.
>> why isn't it deleted when the kid leaves?
Becasue there is a statutory requirement not to? certainly we have to keep pupil data for 3 years, 7 if ALN... this may not be the same in all countries but here in the land of the Ddraig Goch that is the case.
FWIW we used to keep all pupil data on premis then ESS/SIMS decided that everything should be hosted by them... requiring the data to move to wherever their bitbarn is and then some sleek salesperson somewhere got various SLT hooked on a webby interface (Classcharts, I am looking at you) so now the pupil info is spread far and wide accross the interwebs and here we are...
Sigh.
"So why not delete after 7 years?
Certainly take those records offline after a year or so."
It should all be air-gapped and inaccessible in bulk.
Deleting records in one year is likely too short a time. If somebody takes a gap year and then needs transcripts to submit with a college application, that would be a problem. 40 years is obviously a bit extreme, but deletion is a rather permanent thing so it has to be examined if deletion is a good idea at all with records past a certain age archived completely off-line, but retrievable by application and payment of a fee. It might even be a good idea to offer departing students the ability to get a physical copy of their transcripts for their records. My mother was a stay-at-home mom until my parents split up when I was 7 and she went to college for a nursing degree. I'd have to ask if she needed her school transcripts when she started college. The was some time ago and requirements can change.
"I'd have to ask if she needed her school transcripts when she started college."
You really shouldn't need to, but I suppose that doesn't stop them asking or even demanding the info. Going in as a mature student should require no more than your existing qualifications, including school exam results if available, and an interview and if certain information is not available, maybe some written tests to assess academic ability. Most college and/or universities run foundation courses specifically for mature students who may not have "school records" for whatever of a variety of reasons.
"You really shouldn't need to, but I suppose that doesn't stop them asking or even demanding the info. Going in as a mature student should require no more than your existing qualifications, including school exam results if available, and an interview and if certain information is not available, maybe some written tests to assess academic ability. "
Being able to skip all of that is useful. Having exam results isn't likely and isn't "certified" so easy to fake. Transcripts are often sent directly to a college from the school to maintain a "chain of custody" and assure they are truthful.
As I have a couple of degrees, it can be assumed that I am competent in the requirements to gain them so if I was to go to graduate school or wish to take another Bachelor's degree, I'd be allowed to bypass many prerequisites.
"There is probably a requirement to keep overall
attendance and any serious disciplinary records."
I'd argue that those two things should be left behind so somebody with a turbulent childhood can start their adult life with a fairly clean slate. Certainly attendance isn't worth keeping.
In Ontario, Canada, the data retention requirement is clear and well documented. The Ontario Student Record (at least parts of it) are kept for 55 years after the student leaves the school.
This actually makes sense, since the OSR is the basis for generating a transcript of your high school record. It you decide to retire and go to university, you might need a transcript 50 years after you graduate.
"I've returned to university in Canada 3 times since I completed my undergraduate degree and at no time, after I gained initial admission to university directly out of high school, has any institution wanted to see my high school transcript."
That makes sense as you have an undergraduate degree anything previous is superseded. If you went from school to housewife/househusband, some years could pass before you wanted to go back and take a degree or just take whatever courses you fancied without the pursuit of a degree. The college wants to know that you are likely to be able to keep up and won't fail to complete a course. That can take a spot away from somebody else.
In the UK we have to keep student data until the student is 25, and longer for some students.
The student can request we delete it earlier, if they wish.
Prior to GDPR, schools using SIMS had no way sensibly to delete old student data, which did sometimes cause problems when former pupils became staff, and their year 11 photo suddenly became the photo we'd use for their ID badge.
Anyway, now we routinely delete old data, we have a problem whenever we get reference requests from agencies doing deep security checks, so we have to reply "yeah, we remember the person, but we have no exam results on record, because GDPR"
@Tubz:
1. One can outsource the work, but not the responsibility. That's relevant when your company is sued for damages.
2. As an executive, one is supposed to rely on one's subordinates for information and recommendations on areas and issues outside one's expertise. Example: "Mr. Beancounter, if we buy this new stamping machine for our factory, how long will it be before profits from our improved efficiency pay it off? Will the debt service on the loan we'll have to take out to buy it significantly negatively affect our cash reserves? How much is it costing us to keep fixing up and using the older, slower, more-breakdown-prone stamping machine we already have?"
I worked in a school, PS was their SIS. That K-12 school had retention policy of 10 years for keeping records. All students were provided a copy of their transcripts at departure or graduation. So in 2010, Joey graduates, in 2021 Joey decides to return to school, the Uni looks at his transcripts, has a few questions, calls the school to verify, oops, we deleted the info last year. Uni drops the application due to the transcripts being unverifiable?
Data management is tough... so it seems.
"We do not anticipate the data being shared or made public, and we believe it has been deleted without any further replication or dissemination," the software maker told customers this month.
...
"PowerSchool has reported that it received confirmation that the data acquired by the unauthorized user was deleted and that the data was not posted online," Zucker added.
Utter blatherskite! Even if PowerSchool located the data-nappers' facilities, sent in an armed team of thugs which "rigourously questioned" the data-nappers, then shot them in their heads and burned the facility to the ground, there still could be hard drives with copies, or partial copies, of this juicy data floating around. One of the data-nappers could easily have secretly made a copy of the data which the rest of the gang was unaware of. ("Hey, Baby, I've got a box I wanna stash in your attic. It's harmless, but don't mess with it, okay?")
PowerSchool has no real-world basis for the "re-assuring" statements they have made.
They didn't say the source of the confirmation. I
t's the Tony Blair Iraq dossier trick, they asked their mate in the pub 'has the data been deleted', their mate said yes = "we have information from a reliable source that the data was deleted"
""PowerSchool has reported that it received confirmation that the data acquired by the unauthorized user was deleted and that the data was not posted online," Zucker added."
The schools have outsourced data services to an outside contractor who outsourced it to another company. Yeah, that's not going to be problematic.
I don't see creating the software as a thing schools should be doing, but they should be the ones storing that data securely and locally. When a child leaves school, a lot of the data can be purged. Attendance records, certainly but perhaps also things like their membership in the stamp collecting club if a record of that is being kept. The details will very quickly reduce and the best thing to do is not store them as part of risk management. In a few years when the records go to off-line archives, it's down to the basics. Courses taken, grades given and if the person has met the requirements for graduation/graduated. A register of every time they visited the nurse's office can be removed quite quickly and really should be.
It sounds to me like this wasnt a break in by Ransomware crooks, but by a Kid. Who once the Breach became known and calls were made to the Authorities, p'd their pants, and quickly removed any trace of the data they took, and promised never, ever to do such a thing again.
Then again maybe I'm being overly optimistic, and it's just some prick whose waiting for the heat to die down, before starting the scamming...
"We do not anticipate the data being shared or made public, and we believe it has been deleted without any further replication or dissemination,"
That needs to be put alongside their prior belief that they were secure. Neither belief is likely to be the basis for successful defence in court although maybe they also believe they are.
I suppose it's too much to hope that the courts award sufficient damages to put them out of business and serve as a warning to others or, if they're insured, sufficient to make the insurance companies insist on client security reviews which are more than a box-ticking exercise.
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