Emergency Notification: Cyber Security Incident Updates

Notice of Incident December 19, 2024

Dear Pembina Trails Community, and in particular, former students and staff,

As we informed our community on December 2, 2024, Pembina Trails School Division experienced a cyber security incident. Our priorities have been to minimize the impact on learning and safeguarding our student’s and staff’s information.

We engaged professionals to help us investigate and restore our systems. Through our ongoing investigation, we learned that the database containing student information was accessed and the database containing payroll information could have been accessed by an unauthorized third party in the days preceding December 2, 2024.  

Information specific to students

The student database generally contains information about students attending Pembina Trails School Division since 2014. Our student database contains name, date of birth, gender, address, parent or guardian contact information, most recent school photo (no other photos are kept on this database), and personal health identification number. For some students, it also contains health concerns or medical alerts, immigration information, and name of previous educational institution. We do not store financial information on our student information system, and any financial information for international students is stored on a distinct system that was not involved in this incident. 

You should remain cautious, as always, when receiving emails, mail, text messages or phone calls that appear to come from Pembina Trails School Division or claim to be related to this incident or about your child. Be particularly vigilant about communications requesting personal information, those containing hyperlinks or any message that seems unusual. Consider speaking to your children about exercising similar precautions when they receive texts, phone calls or email. For additional support visit getcybersafe.gc.ca

Information specific to staff

The payroll database generally contains information about Pembina Trails School Division staff since 2009. Not all former staff from that period have information stored on the database and any staff whose information was in the database are being contacted by email or mail. Our payroll database contains name, date of birth, gender, address, phone number, compensation information, bank account information, and social insurance number. While we have no evidence that the contents of the payroll database were actually accessed, out of an abundance of caution, we are notifying and offering 36 months of credit monitoring service at no cost to current and former staff whose information was in that database. 

If you have not received a letter by January 15, 2025, please contact us using this form and further information on how to protect yourself can be found here. If you are current staff, please refer to the notice you received at your Pembina Trails email address.

We are committed to safeguarding all personal information we hold. Upon becoming aware of the incident, we engaged third-party cyber security professionals to help us investigate and we took steps to contain the incident, such as taking systems offline and progressively restoring them in a secure manner. In addition to notifying individuals as described above, we also notified law enforcement and the Manitoba Ombudsman. 

We deeply regret that this incident occurred. We find it appalling that an organization dedicated to the education and safety of children should be the focus of this kind of criminal activity. Should you have any questions, please contact our privacy officer using this form.

Update December 30, 2024

Pembina Trails IT department is working through the thousands of desktop and laptop computers at the division’s 36 schools and administration buildings. Each unit is being checked for malware and loaded with a top performing security tool. School systems such as PA and phones have been restored. The team is continuing to work on restoring printers.

The investigation into the cyber security incident is ongoing.

Questions and Answers

This Q & A provides supplemental information to the notice above about the incident. If you have a question, you may contact our privacy officer using this form.