Government Admits to Education Data Breach
Prince George, B.C. – The provincial government has launched a review in the wake of a misplaced backup hard drive containing information of students in B.C. and the Yukon from 1986 to 2009.
It will be conducted by the Office of the Chief Information Officer and according to Technology, Innovation and Citizens’ Services Minister Amrik Virk is meant “to ensure government is doing everything possible to protect personal information and prevent privacy breaches.”
The breach was discovered during a complete records review undertaken by the Ministry of Education to ensure it was in compliance with date-storage standards.
Virk says the Service BC info line is able to help residents to find out if their info is on the drive, and what kind of information it may be (outside Victoria and the Lower Mainland the number to call is 1-800-663-7867).
The Province says there’s no indication the data has been accessed or used adding “the risk to individuals is thought to be low because the data on the missing hard drive does not contain financial or banking information, social insurance numbers of drivers’ licence numbers.”
In total, the hard drive contains the information of 3.4 million students. The breach also includes the following more sensitive information:
*825 survey results from 2003 of teachers aged 53 or older on their retirement plans.
*1,052 personal education numbers, birth years, and grad dates for cancer survivors from a study on their education outcomes.
*9,273 personal education numbers connected to children in the care of the Ministry of Children and Family Development before 2006-2007, including info such as health and behaviour issues and supervision status.
Comments
Really ? what the hell.
Yeah horrible, wouldn’t want those retirement plans getting out into the public. Hope noone sees my grades in grade 10, luckily I stopped “partaking” when I saw the results in my grades and quit cold turkey in order to pick them up in 11 and 12
Slinky after reading your post I dont think you quit partaking ;)
Its disgusting that all this information is missing. I dont care if it only kept how much toilet paper was used per school.. This is unacceptable.
So 8 people were fired, 1 of which subsequently committed suicide, when the gov “thought” there was unlawful data sharing in the health ministry, later proven to be false.
Here we have the government knowing they have a data breach. How many people will be fired?
Virk commented that the government “would take full responsibility” for the loss of data. Wouldn’t full responsibility include him stepping down immediately when just a few short years ago his government fired those individuals they thought might be responsible for a potential leak (which didn’t actually happen)?
Someone needs to look up the definition of “breach”. This was not a breach, this was a civil servant losing a hard drive full of inconsequential data.
I wonder how they know that is what misplaced rather than lost or stolen?
Oops, it was in drawer 2009-C rather than 2009-F. Someone misplaced it.
I would think that one would know only after finding it in the wrong place that one could say it was misplaced.
If it was not where it was supposed to be, then I would call it lost.
How long will it be considered lost, before it will be considered stolen or maybe even reused?
….. oh, here it is .. same serial number and but it does not have the expected data on it …. someone re-formatted it and re-used it.
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