°ÅÀÖÊÓƵ¹ÙÍø

Please see the letter below which contains additional information regarding the recent PowerSchool incident.

February 26, 2025 - PowerSchool Incident Notification Letter

Dear °ÅÀÖÊÓƵ¹ÙÍøCSD Families:

PowerSchool has begun to notify °ÅÀÖÊÓƵ¹ÙÍøCSD parent/guardian or employee email accounts regarding the PowerSchool data incident that we first notified the community about on January 9th. We have been advised by PowerSchool that they have contracted with Experian IdentityWorks for credit monitoring or identity protection to students and educators whose information was involved.

We were able to confirm from our PowerSchool representatives that the PowerSchool notifications were sent by CSID.com, a subsidiary of Experian, beginning on Saturday, February 15th, with emails sent

From: PowerSchool<Ps-sis-incident@mail.csid.com>  or PowerSchool<Ps-sis-incident@mail1.csid.com> 

To: friend <contact email address> 

Please check your email for the PowerSchool/Experian notification email or visit the School District's website at /powerschool-incident for more information. The information provided by PowerSchool to sign up for credit monitoring or identity protection may be found on the page on our website in case you no longer have the original email.

As an update to the PowerSchool incident notification that was initially sent on January 9th, while the media has reported that social security numbers may have been compromised, that is not the case with Smithtown. We do not store social security numbers or credit card numbers in PowerSchool. We continue to work with PowerSchool, BOCES and the NYSED Data Privacy Office on this issue.

Out of an abundance of caution, we took steps to secure staff and student accounts last week. Along those lines, we are recommending that all parents/guardians reset the password that you use to access the PowerSchool Parent Portal. While there is no evidence that those passwords were compromised, this preventative measure will help to maintain the security of the Parent Portal accounts.

As more information becomes available, we will continue to share it with the school community.

°ÅÀÖÊÓƵ¹ÙÍøCentral School District was recently notified of a cybersecurity incident involving our PowerSchool data stored on their servers that occurred in late December.

Unauthorized access occurred via a compromised PowerSchool corporate account on their support portal, affecting multiple districts in the United States and Canada. PowerSchool is working with the FBI and cybersecurity experts. They believe this issue was limited in scope and that it has been contained. We have cybersecurity policies and protocols in place and are working in consultation with PowerSchool, BOCES and the NYSED Data Privacy Office on this issue. Out of an abundance of caution, password resets will be initiated as a precautionary measure.

We will provide updates as we learn more.