National Student Clearinghouse Data Breach

Foothill College has been notified by the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) of a recent data breach. An unauthorized party obtained files from within the NSC systems that may have contained information from current and former Foothill students. Foothill reports student data to NSC for financial aid compliance purposes.

The security breach stems from a vulnerability in the MOVEit Transfer tool, used by the NSC and many other organizations to transfer data files.

Foothill-De Anza Community College District does not use the MOVEit Transfer tool, and no data stored by Foothill-De Anza or systems operated or maintained by the district were breached.

At this time, the extent of the NSC breach and the specific impact to Foothill students remains unclear. However, some of the data maintained by NSC includes personally identifiable information such as social security numbers and dates of birth.

NSC has rectified the vulnerability and is working with law enforcement and a third-party security firm on the investigation. Because the breach encompasses multiple organizations and higher education institutions across the United States, the investigation is expected to be extensive and may require a significant amount of time before it is completed. NSC will directly notify all those affected and provide information for further action.

In the meantime, here are a few precautionary actions you can take:

• Monitor your financial accounts (e.g. banks, credit cards, investments)
• Check your credit report at http://annualcreditreport.com
• Review the Federal Trade Commission’s warning signs of identity theft at https://www.identitytheft.gov/
• Consider signing up for an identity theft protection service

The National Student Clearinghouse is maintaining information about the breach at https://alert.studentclearinghouse.org/. Foothill will continue to closely monitor the situation and provide updates as they become available.