Education boards left gates wide open for PowerSchool mega-breach, say watchdogs

Canadian privacy watchdogs say that school boards must shoulder part of the blame for the PowerSchool mega-breach, not just the ed-tech giant that lost control of millions of student and staff records. In coordinated findings published this week, the privacy commissioners of Ontario and Alberta said that the December 2024 …

[Anonymous Coward]

Are these watchdogs the one's that specify suppliers ?

Seen that before.

"You have to use an approved supplier from this list."

All of which are big companies who don't give a ****.

Open source software can't possibly get in.

And when you have problems it's just you and them. They're the ones you made the contract with.

Am I being cynical?

[JoeCool]

What about government responsibility ?

I have never heard of this commisioner, and I live in Ontario.

Contrast that to the federal PIPEDA which is clearly explained and promoted, allowing individual citizens to challenge private businesses.

The federal PIPEDA requirements would have addressed a lot of these issues. Unfortunately that legislation doesn't apply to public and government orgs. When the provincial government and school boards outsource to private companies, they must ensure the same standards of security. The many provincial governments that failed to manage this data and govern the school boards properly, over several decades, are fully responsible. They need to be actively monitoring these contractors.

And i think PIPEDA needs to be extended.This is mainly a failure of adequate government regulation.