Qld students’ personal data exposed in major breach
Concerns are being raised about thousands of school and university students’ being compromised after a cybersecurity attack on an international learning management system.
Personal information, including the names, email addresses and school locations of thousands of students across Queensland have been compromised, after a cybersecurity attack on an international learning management system.
In a statement, Queensland Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek said third-party provider Instructure – which delivers the department’s online learning platform, QLearn – had been hit.
The database contained information about current and past students.
He said the “early advice” was students and staff working or studying at Education Queensland schools since 2020 had been affected.
“This incident has impacted thousands of educational institutions, including state schools and universities within Queensland, across Australia and overseas, and early advice is this will impact more than 200 million people and more than 9,000 institutions worldwide,” he said.
You might like
But while some personal data had been compromised, he said there was “no evidence of passwords, dates of birth or financial information being accessed in the data breach”.
Schools are now in the process of notifying impacted families, Langbroek said, with priority support for those with known family and domestic violence, or those known to Child Safety.
“The Department of Education will continue to update Queenslanders as further information is available,” he said.
The news comes after another major university in Sydney reported a security breach, saying the cloud-based Canvas learning management system, developed by American company Instructure, occurred on Saturday, May 2 (Australian time).
The University of Technology Sydney deputy vice-chancellor said “The university is one of approximately 9,000 educational institutions worldwide that is potentially impacted.”
Want to see more stories from InDaily Qld in your Google search results?
- Click here to set InDaily Qld as a preferred source.
- Tick the box next to "InDaily Qld". That's it.
