Hackers stole the data of 200,000 individuals from Arizona school district's systems

Mesa, Arizona-based public school district, the East Valley Institute of Technology, said that the data security incident it suffered earlier this year compromised the sensitive personal information of more than 200,000 individuals.

 

In a filing with the Office of Maine Attorney General and a notice of data security incident on its website, East Valley Institute of Technology said that on January 9, it became a victim of a data security incident that involved threat actors infiltrating its internal network.

 

The public school district immediately launched an investigation, with assistance from external cyber security experts, to determine the nature and scope of the incident. Also, EVIT took steps to secure the affected systems and reported the incident to law enforcement authorities.

 

The school district’s investigation revealed that the hacker group who infiltrated its network accessed and stole sensitive personal information of the District’s students and guardians.

 

The compromised data included names, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, addresses, names, Social Security Numbers, driver’s license or state IDs, passport details, financial details including account and routing numbers, insurance information, medical information including diagnosis and prescription details and more.

 

EVIT’s filing with the Maine state regulator also revealed that at least 208,000 individuals were impacted by the data security incident.

 

EVIT says it has taken several corrective steps to avoid similar incidents in the future, including locking down VPN Access, deploying EDR software, 24x7 monitoring for the incident, changing all service account passwords and more.

 

While East Valley Institute of Technology found no evidence of the compromised information being misused, it advised all affected individuals to regularly monitor their credit reports, account and benefit statements and report any suspicious activity to law enforcement authorities, including the police and state attorney general. It has also offered one year of complimentary identity protection and credit monitoring services through CyEx to all affected individuals.