Metro Nashville Public Schools Information Technology Department was notified by an MNPS employee that a students’ personal information had been discovered on the Internet. The information linked back to Public Consulting Group, a state-contracted data file vendor. The district immediately contacted PCG and discovered the information was inadvertently made available through an internet search engine, Google, due to a technical error in student data delivery being tested by PCG.
Metro Information released included 18,541 students’ names, addresses, date of birth and full Social Security numbers. This information was available through Google searches beginning on December 28, 2008. In some cases, information also contained the names, addresses and telephone numbers of the student’s parents. When the MNPS employee discovered the breach and contacted the district’s IT Department, the district immediately contacted PCG. March 30, when the district contacted PCG, the vendor informed the district the information breach had been discovered and removed March 5, 2009. However, PCG did not realize the information was still accessible through Google’s saved pages. A notification to Google was made March 30 and all information was removed from Google’s storage servers by March 31, 2009.
Metro Nashville Public Schools and the Tennessee Department of Education take this breach extremely seriously and have worked with Public Consulting Group to determine how this breach occurred, identify the students whose information was available, and ensure such actions do not occur in the future. We can assure you that the potential for misuse appears limited. Records show only four hits occurred while this information was available. Of those four hits, one was the MNPS employee. By now, all MNPS families should have received a call from the district’s automated call-home system explaining this breach and steps being taken to ensure each child’s identity is protected.
PCG has also agreed to offer all families affected one year of online credit monitoring at no cost to the family through Experian, a leading national credit monitoring and identity protection company.
We regret that this breach has occurred and we are working with all parties involved to ensure that all necessary steps are taken to protect you and your child’s personal information going forward. If you have any questions or concerns, or need additional information regarding the coverage provided by PCG, please do not hesitate to contact the Metro Schools Customer Service at 615-259-INFO (4636).