San Diego Unified alerts families of cybersecurity incident involving student data

The San Diego Unified School District alerted families on Tuesday night about a cybersecurity incident involving student data.

The district said it learned on Tuesday that PowerSchool — an information system provider that the district uses — was the target of the incident, in which an unauthorized user downloaded some student data from San Diego Unified and other districts.

The provider is doing an analysis on what type of information was accessed in this incident, discovered on Dec. 28, according to the district.

"PowerSchool has told us the situation has been contained, and they have taken actions to prevent the information from being used," W. Drew Rowlands, San Diego Unified's deputy superintendent of operations, wrote in the email, in part.