South Carolina students and teachers were among those who had their personal information accessed in an international data breach, according to the state Department of Education.
All but four districts had their data accessed, the department said in a Thursday news release.
A district having its data accessed does not necessarily mean the data was stolen, and the department is continuing to assess exactly how many students were affected, it reads.
The four districts not affected are Edgefield, Greenville, and Horry counties and Richland 2 in Columbia’s northeast suburbs, according to the news release.
It’s unclear what kind of data might have been stolen. The release says only that “personally identifiable information was compromised.” No further information is available, a department spokesman said.
PowerSchool is used by districts for a variety of purposes, including tracking student attendance and grades, schedules and training. The cloud-based software giant, which provides systems for more than 45 million students around the world, contained the data breach and has been taking steps to secure its system, consult with cybersecurity experts and report the incident to law enforcement, according to the news release.
“We have taken all appropriate steps to prevent the data involved from further unauthorized access or misuse,” a spokesperson for PowerSchool said in a statement. “The incident is contained and we do not anticipate the data being shared or made public.”