Fargo Public Schools and Rome City School District Hit In Massive Third-Party Data Breach

• The incident has compromised Fargo Public school students’ names, dates of birth and student ID numbers.
• Meanwhile, students who attended the Rome City District school between 2013 and 2014, had their names, dates of birth, school information, and school district attendance compromised.

What is the matter?

Fargo Public schools and Rome City District school fell victim to a data breach incident caused by a third-party vendor, Pearson.

What happened?

Pearson notified the schools that it had experienced a data security incident involving an older version of the Pearson Clinical Assessment's program, AIMSweb that was accessed by an unauthorized third party.

What information was involved?

The incident has compromised Fargo Public school students’ names, dates of birth and student ID numbers. School officials confirmed that no social security number or credit card information was compromised in the data breach and that there is no evidence that any data accessed has been misused.

Meanwhile, students who attended the Rome City District school between 2013 and 2014, had their names, dates of birth, school information, and school district attendance compromised.

What was the response?

Pearson announced that it is offering free credit monitoring to Fargo Public schools and Rome City District school students whose information may have been compromised in the breach.

Rome City District School Superintendent, Peter Blake said that the district has ceased its contract with Pearson and no longer uses AIMSweb product.

“According to Blake, Pearson provided the district with a student assessment tool, AIMSweb, which required storage of student data. AIMSweb was hacked by unauthorized users. Blake says the district no longer uses AIMSweb product that experienced the data breach, AIMSweb 1.0,” a local media reported.