"NYC Teachers' Social Security Numbers Exposed"

In January, students at Brooklyn Technical High School reportedly stumbled across a Google Drive containing documents uploaded by staff and students at schools across New York City. Among the documents were college recommendation letters, classwork, and parent-teacher conference sign-up sheets.  The students could access the files because of a quirk in the school’s education department’s Google Drive sharing settings. A hidden setting automatically allowed anyone with an email address provided by the education department to search for files in Google Drive.  After making the discovery, the students arranged a meeting with a senior staff member at their school and used a PowerPoint presentation to walk them through the data breach.  After the meeting, the students thought the issue would get taken care of, but when they rechecked the Google Drive in March, they found that even more documents were now accessible. This time, the students could view a school’s payroll document that contained teachers’ salary information, Social Security numbers, phone numbers, and addresses.  On March 18, the students notified three officials at the city’s education department of the data breach via email. Earlier this month, the department confirmed a data leak that impacted approximately 3,000 students and 100 employees.  The department stated that confidentiality laws prevented them from confirming that this leak was linked to the data breach reported by the Brooklyn Tech students in March. 

Infosecurity reports: "NYC Teachers' Social Security Numbers Exposed"