The edtech giant is notifying state attorneys general about the breach but won’t say how many individuals have been affected

The hacker who breached education tech giant PowerSchool claimed in an extortion demand that they stole the personal data of 62.4 million students and 9.5 million teachers.

The hack has the potential to be one of the biggest of the year, but the edtech giant is refusing to answer important questions

Professor noted the need for continued pushes for multi-factor authentication for educational services that require such extensive identifying information.

Education software giant PowerSchool has started notifying individuals in the U.S. and Canada whose personal data was exposed in a late December 2024 cyberattack.

A new report from Bleeping Computer suggests the hacker infiltrated the entire PowerSchool userbase, but PowerSchool declined to confirm or deny the numbers to PCMag.

Bleeping Computer on Wednesday also reported that an extortion note the attacker sent to PowerSchool claimed that the personal data of 62.4 million students and 9.5 million teachers was swept up in the breach. PowerSchool said it’s offering two years of free credit monitoring to all those affected.

If you're a student or teacher — or were one in the past few decades — you may soon be getting a head's up that your personal information was accessed as part of the widespread PowerSchool cyber breach that recently hit Canadian school boards.

Data belonging to hundreds of thousands of Newfoundland and Labrador students was breached in a cyberattack targeting an information system used by schools across the country.