The Federal Trade Commission took action against Illuminate Education on December 1, 2025, after the Wisconsin-based company suffered a massive data breach that exposed personal information of more than 10 million students. In late December 2021, a hacker used login credentials from a former employee who had left the company three and a half years earlier.
The breach exposed students’ email addresses, home addresses, dates of birth, student records, and health information. The company had promised schools it would protect student data “like it’s our own” and claimed to use industry best practices. But the FTC found Illuminate failed to implement basic security measures, including storing student data in plain text format until at least January 2022.
Read more…
Source: ConsumerAffairs News
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- UK: Legal Aid database hacked, ‘significant amount’ of data and criminal records stolen
May 19, 2025
The UK’s Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has revealed that a cyberattack on the Legal Aid system has led to the theft of a “significant amount” of data, including criminal records. The MoJ was alerted to the attack on April 23 when data dating back as far as 2010 was accessed by the attackers. Earlier this month, ...
- Fashion giant Dior confirms customer data accessed in cyber attack
May 15, 2025
Luxury French fashion brand Dior is the latest high-profile retail firm to be hit by a cyber attack. In a statement, Dior said customer data was accessed as a result, however, no financial information was impacted. The incident comes in the wake of a number of UK retailers, including Marks and Spencer and Co-op, being hit ...
- Coinbase warns of $400m hit after data breach
May 15, 2025
Crypto exchange Coinbase has disclosed a significant cyber attack that could cost the company between $180m (£135m) and $400m (£300m), after hackers breached account data belonging to a “small subset” of its users. The news sent shares down three per cent in pre-market trading on Thursday. Coinbase said it received an email from an unknown threat ...
- Ransomware group Lockbit appears to have been hacked
May 8, 2025
The ransom-seeking cybercriminals behind the extortion group Lockbit appear to have suffered a breach of their own, according to a rogue post to one of the group’s websites and security analysts who follow the gang. On Wednesday one of Lockbit’s darkweb sites was replaced with a message saying, “Don’t do crime CRIME IS BAD xoxo from ...
- A timeline of South Korean telco giant SKT’s data breach
May 8, 2025
In April, South Korea’s telco giant SK Telecom (SKT) was hit by a cyberattack that led to the theft of personal data on approximately 23 million customers, equivalent to almost half of the country’s 52 million residents. At a National Assembly hearing in Seoul on Thursday, SKT chief executive Young-sang Ryu said about 250,000 users have ...
- Top ticket resale platform hit by data breach
May 6, 2025
Ticket reselling platform Ticket To Cash kept an unprotected database online, exposing sensitive information on hundreds of thousands of customers, experts have warned. The database was discovered by cybersecurity researcher Jeremiah Fowler, who managed to get in touch with the company and get the database locked down, sharing the details withVPNMentor. Ticket To Cash is a ...