by Sudha Sudhaker ‘21

A data breach in Montgomery County Public Schools affected nearly 6,000 accounts from six schools. The breach occurred in early October when an MCPS student hacked into the college and career readiness program, Naviance. The student wrote a program that attempted various combinations of usernames and passwords to gain access. Personal information such as SAT scores, GPAs, student’s IDs, phone numbers, and email addresses were downloaded by the student. Naviance notified one of the major schools affected, Wheaton High School, which prompted MCPS to begin an investigation. Other schools affected by the breach include Montgomery Blair High School, Julius West  Middle School, Argyle Middle School, Parkland Middle School, and Loiederman Middle School. MCPS responded to the data breach by directing all Naviance users to reset their passwords. Information accessed in the breach did not include social security numbers, banking information, or credit card information, and MCPS police believed that the student hacker did not share any of the accessed information with others.

The drama surrounding the data breaches reflects that cyber security of students’ personal and academic information has become a serious problem. Many school districts’ cybersecurity has proven to be too weak for the technology savvy students. School districts have considered implementing more security scans and stronger security systems in order to create a safer cyber space for students’ information. Many branches result from vulnerabilities in the cyber system that have not been detected, so MCPS intends on improving its cyber security to prevent any future hacks in the system.