2022-04-05 Illuminate Education

NOTIFICATION OF SECURITY INCIDENT
Illuminate Education

In a letter dated April 5, 2022, Colorado Springs School District 11 received notification from a district third-party vendor, Illuminate Education, that a data security incident that may have impacted a limited number of District 11 students’ personally identifiable information.

Through our investigation, we learned that Illuminate Education, which District 11 utilized to house information about students to track their academic progress, suffered a data security incident between the dates of December 28, 2021 and January 8, 2022, by which an unauthorized party accessed data that was maintained and stored in a tool that Illuminate Education utilizes to migrate data among their platforms.

Upon receiving notice of this security incident, we immediately undertook an internal investigation and worked with Illuminate Education to understand the incident’s scope and what students were impacted. D11’s internal investigation as well as Illuminate Education’s forensic investigation into the incident determined that 32,226 students were impacted. The affected databases contained student names, date of birth, district identification numbers, educational plans and demographic information. The data did not include any data related to special education and did not include social security numbers.

Although Illuminate Education’s forensics investigators did submit a report to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to Illuminate Education, there was no evidence to suggest the student data had been or will be misused. Unfortunately, this breach is impacting many districts across Colorado and the entire nation.

As a service to impacted families, Illuminate Education is offering 12 months complimentary identify protection services through IDX at no cost. Impacted families will receive a written letter from Illuminate Education with a code to take advantage of this service, as well as additional information on this incident. We encourage impacted families to take advantage of these services on behalf of their student.

If you have questions for School District 11, please contact the following individuals:

John McCarron, Assistant Superintendent/Chief Information Officer
719-520-2085 or john.mccarron@d11.org

Katherine Ritchie Rapp, Director of Archives and Records
719-520-2075 or katherine.ritchie@d11.org