Northwest Minnesota school districts hit by nationwide data breach
EAST GRAND FORKS, Minn. — A data breach that has affected 13,000 schools and universities across the United States is also affecting a number of school districts served by the Area Special Education Cooperative in northwest Minnesota.
The school districts include: 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.
Previously, the Fargo, Moorhead, West Fargo and Bismarck school districts were among local districts that reportedly have been affected by the breach in a version of a data management platform called AIMSweb, which is owned by Pearson Clinical Assessment.
In the case of the data breach affecting ASEC, about 2,000 student names were involved and of those about 165 had the student's school ID number included.
Pearson has informed school officials that there is no evidence any data accessed by the breach has been misused.
Pearson is offering complimentary credit monitoring 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.
If an email is used, individuals are asked to provide their name, a statement of the situation and whether they would like the credit monitoring information. They will then receive an email with links and instructions for signing up.
Gloss