The local English Catholic school board's warning more information - including about students - was likely compromised by a cyberattack just ahead of Christmas.
The Huron-Superior Catholic District School Board had announced in January that the December 15th "cyber-incident" which caused an early start to the holidays saw the attackers steal "a significant number of files from a Board file server", warning at the time that employees employed in the last four tax years - 2019 to 2022 - were likely affected - with information such as social insurance numbers, date of birth information, compensation information, banking information, and garnishment information exposed - and it warned "some students and parents will likely be affected", but it would take time to go through the data to determine who was affected and "to what extent".
It now says further analysis of the data has led the board to inform certain students and more employees that their information was compromised - it is offering credit monitoring services to those individuals "as warranted and based on the type of information exposed".
HSCDSB says "delivering the notices was a major milestone in putting this difficult matter behind us", adding "we have learned from it and are continuing to strengthen our defences" and - while "security concerns themselves limit our ability to say more" - the board assures "our community...our efforts are multi-faceted, improve our defences against phishing attacks, and enhance our ability to detect intrusions should they occur", so they're "confident that we are better protected from the significant cyber security risks which face school boards across the province today".