Data breach revealed for company of school safety app Mid-Missouri schools signed up to use
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
A popular school safety application used by thousands of schools across the country -- including some in Mid-Missouri -- had thousands of documents accessed that contained sensitive information.
Cybersecurity researcher Jerimiah Fowler said he discovered a breach in Raptor Technologies on Dec. 20 and notified the company of the flaw. Raptor Technologies' smartphone application Raptor Alert is aimed at improving responses for schools and law enforcement during emergencies, such as school shootings.
Fowler said he discovered more than 4 million records that contained highly sensitive data. That data included school maps, student health records, safety drill reports and court records. Fowler's report claims documents in a cloud system were not protected with a password.
Raptor Technologies says it is used by 60,000 schools across the world including more than 5,300 schools in the United States.
In August, ABC 17 News reported around 830 Missouri schools signed up for the school safety app, which is paid for by the state. Some of those schools in Mid-Missouri include the Jefferson City School District, New Franklin R-1 Schools and Columbia Public Schools.
CPS told ABC 17 News on Friday morning the district had not started using the application yet.
"It wasn’t made available until late November/early December, after school started," CPS spokesperson Michelle Baumstark said. "We’re working on plans for a mid-year implementation. With such a large district, we really needed it before school started to get the full implementation completed with training."
Missouri Department of Public Safety spokesman told ABC 17 News it learned of the breach from Raptor Technologies on Thursday. The spokesman said the company took action about securing the data and believes no one besides Fowler had accessed the data.
"Raptor Technologies says some data from some Missouri schools had been vulnerable before being secured," DPS spokesman Mike O'Connell said. "Raptor will be providing additional information to those schools."
O'Connell said it told the company the breach was unacceptable and security improvements need to be made.
Raptor Technologies told ABC 17 News it took prompt action once it was made aware of an issue "involving certain cloud-hosted data repositories" and claims it had no evidence the information was misused.
Fowler says the day after he found the information breach, the information he had accessed became restricted.
ABC 17 News has reached out to the Jefferson City School District.
