Data Breach

Colorado Department of Higher Education (CDHE) discloses data breach after ransomware attack

The Colorado Department of Higher Education (CDHE) finally disclosed a data breach impacting students, past students, and teachers after the June attack.

In June a ransomware attack hit the Colorado Department of Higher Education (CDHE), now the organization disclosed a data breach. CDHE did not disclose the number of impacted individuals.

CDHE discovered the ransomware attack on June 19, 2023, it immediately launched an investigation into the security breach with the help of third-party specialists.

The experts determined the threat actors had access to CDHE systems between June 11 and June 19, 2023 and copied data from the company systems during this time.

The incident impacted teachers, current and past students, attackers had access to names and social security numbers or student identification numbers, as well as other education records

“While this incident is still part of an ongoing criminal and internal investigation, we do know that an unauthorized actor(s) accessed CDHE systems between June 11 and June 19, 2023 and that certain data was copied from CDHE systems during this time.” reads the Notice of Data Incident published by the company. “Over the past few weeks, our investigation has revealed that some of the impacted records include names and social security numbers or student identification numbers, as well as other education records.”

Once the investigation will be completed, CDHE will notify impacted by mail or email.

The company added that the incident may have impacted those that attended a public institution of higher education in Colorado between 2007-2020, attended a Colorado public high school between 2004-2020, individuals with a Colorado K-12 public school educator license between 2010-2014, participated in the Dependent Tuition Assistance Program from 2009-2013, participated in Colorado Department of Education’s Adult Education Initiatives programs between 2013-2017, or obtained a GED between 2007-2011.

CDHE provides free access to the identify theft monitoring Experian IdentityWorksSM for 24 months.

At the time of this writing, no ransomware group has claimed responsibility for the security breach.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, data breach)

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.

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