Schools

Sachem To Start Notifying Those Affected By Info Leak

A review of the district's computer network is revealing no evidence of a "brute force attack" or firewall breach, district said.

Those who Sachem Central School District knows or believes have had their information leaked onto public websites are going to start receiving notifications, the district announced in a statement early Thursday morning.

“This egregious violation of the personal privacy of certain students is of grave concern to us, and the district will continue to work closely with local and federal law enforcement  officials  in  an attempt to identify and prosecute those responsible for this violation,” the statement said.

The statement, which is posted to the school’s website, updates that the school district has made complaints to the Suffolk County Police Department and the Federal Law Enforcement Officials that one or multiple individuals have unlawfully been copying or downloading student data from the school district. Some of this information may have been what was posted to the “Sachem Safety” websites that have been popping up and down over the last week, but the district has not yet confirmed if this is the source.

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The district said they have now received authorization to reach out to those who may be affected by the data leak, and the district will be making direct notifications to those who are.

The district is encouraging individuals to continue to “take all reasonable precautions” with their personal credit information. A review of the district’s computer network is revealing no evidence of a “brute force attack” or firewall breach indicating a breach of data systems from the outside, the district said.

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“Access to student records  is  an  important  daily  internal function  of  any  school  district, however,  which  could  render  our  data  vulnerable  to  a determined criminal actor willing to misuse access to our systems,” the statement said.

The district is asking for those with information that can help with the investigation to call Suffolk County Police Department at 631-852-COPS(2677) or abuse@sachem.edu.

What are your thoughts on this leak and investigation? Talk about them in the comments below.

Editor's Note: The links to the websites in question are not being posted by Sachem Patch, and any user who posts the link or illegal content from the Sachem Safety website or others onto Patch will have their posts deleted. To help expedite this, users are encouraged to click the "Flag as Inappropriate" button on any inappropriate posts as that will have Patch's spam filters choose whether to block posts automatically. For more on Patch's posting policies, check our Terms of Service at http://sachem.patch.com/terms.


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