River Trails school district affected by Pearson data breach

Students from Mount Prospect's River Trails School District 26 and across the country may be vulnerable after personal information was exposed in a major data breach, officials said.

Pearson, a major textbook publisher, notified its customers this week of a data breach in November 2018 that allowed unauthorized access to about 13,000 school and university accounts for AIMSweb 1.0, a program that assesses student performance, according to a news release from Pearson. The publisher said it learned about the breach in March and immediately began to work with the police and look into the extent of the breach with cybersecurity experts.

There isn't any evidence that the information has been misused, the release said.

River Trails Superintendent Nancy Wagner sent a news release Thursday informing families and students of the breach and said most of the exposed data of is "directory information," but district officials are concerned because Pearson has said the exposed data may include birthdays, names and email addresses. The publisher said no grade or assessment information was exposed.

Wagner said the district has contacted the families whose contact info is still on file. Visit www.rtsd26.org/news/what_s_new/pearson_aimsweb_data_incident to find out if your information was exposed. Affected families are eligible for free credit monitoring, Wagner said.