“’You should certainly interact with your (cyber) insurance brokers in that regard and speak with them about the best circumstance for you,’ (PowerSchool Chief Legal Officer Michael) Bisignano” has been advising clients of the firm, which this month began alerting clients of its recent breach.
How the PowerSchool Hack and the Need for Cyber Insurance Broker
PowerSchool, a provider of digital, cloud and AI tools to K-12 schools across the US and Canada, was hacked last month, exposing PII and other data on students and staff stored by the company’s Student Information System (SIS). Hundreds of schools and up to 60 million people “supported” by PowerSchool solutions have been impacted. The hack, now under investigation by the FBI, is creating exposure for many schools, and of course PowerSchool itself, to a myriad of state and federal regulations covering cyber breaches, plus of course the certain onslaught of class action lawsuits.
We’ve reported on how schools are turning to cyber insurance, and the costs of doing so, as hackers target their data. The PowerSchool hack, as in previous hacks of popular corporate enterprise software solutions (the “software supply chain”), shows how security failures by third-party software vendors can create risks for large numbers of their customers.