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Beaufort County Schools was made aware of a data breach to PowerSchool, a cloud-based software vendor that helps manage student information.

PowerSchool informed the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction of a cybersecurity incident involving unauthorized access to certain PowerSchool Student Information System data. They confirmed that the information belongs to a portion of Beaufort County Schools families and educators.

“PowerSchool informed us that the breached  data primarily includes parent and student contact information with data elements such as name and address information. They have determined that for a portion of individuals across their customer base, some personally identifiable information (PII), such as social security numbers (SSN) and medical information, may have been impacted. PowerSchool has confirmed that the incident has been contained and assured all customers that the extracted data has been deleted,” the school system said in an announcement to families.

The school system continued to say that PowerSchool is working to determine if personally identifiable information that belongs to students was included. PowerSchool said there was nothing Beaufort County Schools and the department of public instruction could have done to prevent the cybersecurity attack.

Families and staff members affected by the cybersecurity attack will be contacted by PowerSchool by the end of January. PowerSchool will continue to closely monitor the situation.

The school system’s announcement stated that,”protecting our students, staff and families is something Beaufort County Schools takes seriously. With PowerSchool’s help, more information and resources (including credit monitoring or identity protection services if applicable) will be provided to you as it becomes available. Additional information can be found on the following website – https://www.powerschool.com/security/sis-incident/.”