A third-party software provider that maintains student and teacher data for school districts across the country disclosed it suffered a data breach earlier this month.

Education technology giant PowerSchool has confirmed a data breach that may have exposed information on millions of schoolchildren, putting them at risk of identity theft. PowerSchool has over 18,000 clients,

The hack has the potential to be one of the biggest of the year, but the edtech giant is refusing to answer important questions

Professor noted the need for continued pushes for multi-factor authentication for educational services that require such extensive identifying information.

Bleeping Computer on Wednesday also reported that an extortion note the attacker sent to PowerSchool claimed that the personal data of 62.4 million students and 9.5 million teachers was swept up in the breach. PowerSchool said it’s offering two years of free credit monitoring to all those affected.

Four decades of student and educator information was stolen from PowerSchool – tens of millions are potentially affected.

PowerSchool, a widely used platform among districts in western Washington, including Seattle and Everett, confirmed the breach.

The hack of a K-12 software provider has left student and teacher information exposed in districts around the country. The breach has left many North Carolina students, teachers and families worried about the potential impact on their privacy.

PowerSchool says its software stores information of over 62 million K-12 students and teachers across more than 18,000 customers.

Over 60 million students & teachers data may have been stolen in PowerSchool breach