Sidney Schools do not store Social Security numbers, medical information

School Districts subscribing to PowerSchool are racing to check their impact in the latest cyber attack.

The Nebraska Examiner announced January 15 that a California-based education software is the recent target of hackers, compromising personal data of millions of American adults and children,

Sidney School District is one of the school districts involved in the cyber attack. Superintendent Andrew Farber said the District's administration is communicating with PowerSchool regarding the extent of the attack.

"We are currently working with them to determine the extent of the issue. They will provide us with more information in the near future," said Farber.

This is more of a PowerSchool issue than a Sidney Public Schools issue, he added.

Potter-Dix School District and Leyton School District do not subscribe to PowerSchool.

The breach happened at the end of December. At some schools, hackers gained access to student addresses, Social Security numbers, grades and medical information, PowerSchool officials reported. Names, phone numbers and email addresses of parents and guardians were also potentially compromised. Hackers were able to use a stolen credential, or login, to access the internal customer support portal. PowerSchool currently has 16,000 customers, and is used by more than 50 million students across North America. 

The incident is the latest large-scale data breach in the U.S., as year after year, the number of cybercrimes continues to rise. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded 880,418 complaints in 2023, a 10 percent increase from the complaints registered the year prior, and nearly double the number of crimes reported in 2019. The agency estimates potential monetary losses due to cybercrime since 2019 to be $37.4 billion. 

The company said it was extorted into paying a sum to prevent hackers from leaking the stolen data.