Smarter Balanced Contractor Suffers Data Breach
Education Week reports that the American Institute for Research suffered a data breach earlier this month:
After one of the organization’s servers was hacked, the sensitive personal information of as many as 6,500 current and former employees, including Social Security numbers and personal credit card information, was compromised, an AIR spokesman confirmed during an interview Monday with Education Week. No student or client information was affected.“The breach only affected our business systems,” said Larry McQuillan, the organization’s director of public affairs. “By design, student data resides on an external information system independent from the domain that was affected.”The Washington-based AIR has hundreds of contracts with federal, state, and local agencies, including the United States departments of agriculture, commerce, defense, education, health and human services, and more, according to the group’s website. The organization has been a major provider of both online and pencil-and-paper assessments to districts and states, including Delaware, Minnesota, and Oregon.AIR also has contracts with the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, one of two majorSmarter Balanced Contractor Suffers Data Breach | Truth in American Education: