Wilmette Public Schools District 39 announced today that it is among 13,000 schools and colleges affected by a 2018 data breach in Pearson’s AIMSweb 1.0 software.
On July 31, 2019, international education software and data systems provider Pearson announced that a data breach had occurred in its AIMSweb 1.0 software. Unauthorized access had been granted to the names, dates of birth and email addresses of AIMSweb users, including District 39 students and faculty. Some District 39 students enrolled between 2004 and 2016 have had their information compromised as a result of the breach, specifically student names and dates of birth.
“Out of an abundance of caution, we have directly notified the families of all students past and present affected by the breach,” said District 39 Superintendent Dr. Kari Cremascoli. “We take seriously our obligation to protect the personal identifying information of our students, faculty and families. We maintain a high standard of internal digital security and we limit the data we provide to vendors to what is essentially required to fulfill a critical function.”
District 39 began using AIMSweb 1.0 software shortly after its launch in 2004 as an assessment tool of readiness, growth and progression of skills in the area of reading.
Pearson representatives say they learned of the breech in March 2019. The company has worked with cybersecurity experts to fix the vulnerability in their software moving forward.
Pearson provided complimentary credit monitoring services to all individuals affected by the data breach.