It has been determined that a nationwide data breach impacting more than 13,000 schools and universities in the United States also affects students in districts served by the Area Special Education Cooperative which includes Ada-Borup, Climax-Shelly, East Grand Forks, Fertile-Beltrami, Fisher, Fosston, Norman County West, Norman County East, Red Lake County Central, Red Lake Falls, Stephen- Argyle Central, Warren- Alvarado-Oslo, and Win-E-Mac.
Fargo, West Fargo, Moorhead, and Bismarck public schools previously reported being affected by the breach in a version of a data management platform called AIMSweb, which is owned by Pearson Clinical Assessment.
The data contained in the file, as provided by Pearson, included student first name, last name and in some instances a school ID number. There were approximately 2,000 students who had first and last name affected by the breach and of those approximately 165 had the student’s school ID number included.
Pearson has indicated there is no evidence any data accessed by the breach has been misused. Pearson Clinical Assessment is offering complimentary credit monitoring from Experian for people affected by the breach.
Parents can find more information on those services by calling 866-883-3309, or by emailing aimsweb1request@pearson.com. In the email, individuals are asked to provide their name, a statement of the situation and whether they would like the credit monitoring information. They’ll then receive an email with links and instructions on signing up. Any family in the affected districts can sign up for monitoring.