Payment security: Interview with Bob Carr, chairman and CEO of Heartland Payment Systems

Aside from the possible compromise of names, birthdates, genders, home addresses, phone numbers, and health card digits, TDSB students enrolled beginning Sep. 2017 may have also had their parent, guardian, or caregiver contact details and certain medical data leaked.

"This compromise was quickly contained and our technology environment is currently considered to be free of known malicious activity as confirmed by our third-party security experts," said a Conduent spokesperson, who did not confirm whether the intrusion involved ransomware or data exfiltration.

The recent breach of PowerSchool, a widely used student and teacher management software platform, is a stark reminder of the precarious state of cybersecurity in the U.S. education sector.