N.S. offers online protection for Cape Breton students, staff hit by school cyberattack

Tom Ayers · CBC News

· Posted: May 09, 2025 3:47 PM EDT | Last Updated: 12 minutes ago

Nova Scotia's Department of Education is offering students, parents and unit immoderate online extortion aft a cybersecurity breach earlier this year.

But an adept says those affected volition person to stay connected defender to support their idiosyncratic information.

The Cape Breton-Victoria portion was the lone schoolhouse territory successful the state to beryllium hacked during a North America-wide information breach of the U.S.-based PowerSchool service.

Students and erstwhile students successful Cape Breton were sent letters this week, saying their names and addresses, dates of birth, aesculapian accusation and different schoolhouse records were stolen.

Education Minister Brendan Maguire said those excessively young to person a recognition people are being offered online individuality protection, portion others are being offered recognition monitoring for 2 years.

"The main happening close present is ensuring that their accusation that has been compromised ... [is] protected, and moving forward, they person the extortion determination to guarantee that they haven't been financially oregon personally impacted," helium said.

School officials accidental the information breach affected astir 42,000 students, parents and unit implicit a fig of years.

PowerSchool paying for online protection

The section says the outgo of the online extortion is being paid by PowerSchool.

Maguire said it's not wide wherefore lone 1 determination centre successful the state was affected. "I can't get into the caput of a criminal," helium said.

Some schoolhouse boards successful different jurisdictions person been deed with ransom demands, but not Cape Breton.

PowerSchool says its work is present secure, according to Maguire.

"Obviously, there's nefarious forces retired determination that are ever looking to get into this benignant of information, truthful we're continuously monitoring and we're continuously moving with them to guarantee this is harmless for everybody involved," helium said.

Schools crossed the state proceed to usage the work to way enrolment, attendance and grades.

"It is simply a state-of-the-art program. We haven't had galore problems with it," Maguire said. "Obviously this is thing that is troublesome." 

Francis Syms, subordinate dean of applied subject and exertion astatine Toronto's Humber Polytechnic, said radical should instrumentality the extortion offered by the government, but they should stay vigilant.

For example, erstwhile students could beryllium contacted astir an upcoming people reunion and it could dependable legitimate, but could beryllium utilized to get fiscal information, helium said.

Consider section solutions

"I deliberation particularly implicit the adjacent twelvemonth oregon so, we person to presume that that information is going to beryllium sold and utilized to perpetrate fraud connected america and we person to beryllium suspicious of anybody calling us," Syms said.

Having information stored with a institution extracurricular Canadian borders leaves governments with small leverage to spell aft the institution oregon the hackers, helium said.

Governments should alternatively see uncovering section information retention solutions.

"In Canada, we person immoderate laws astir however information tin beryllium shared, which enactment sometimes, don't enactment different times, but successful the U.S., there's nary national statute astir that.

"So if you're moving with an enactment that has your information successful the U.S., each bets are disconnected arsenic to wherever that information goes oregon could beryllium sold."

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