PowerSchool

PowerSchool provides K-12 software to more than 18,000 schools to support some 60 million students in the United States. The company’s school information system, PowerSchool SIS, is used by schools to manage student records, grades, attendance, and enrollment. In December 2024 the firm confirmed a "massive" breach. The firm hired the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to investigate the incident, but a report was not completed by the target date of January 17 2025. PowerSchool hasn’t said how much data was accessed during the cyberattack, but in a communication shared with its customers earlier this month, seen by TechCrunch, the company confirmed that hackers stole “sensitive personal information” on students and teachers, including some students’ Social Security numbers, grades, demographics, and medical information. PowerSchool paid a ransom to the attackers that breached its systems. However, when asked by TechCrunch, the company refused to say how much it paid, nor how much the hackers demanded. CyberSteward, the Canadian incident response organization that PowerSchool worked with to negotiate, did not respond to TechCrunch’s questions.