Personal data belonging to thousands of current and past examiners and moderators for exam board AQA has been stolen, the exam board has revealed.
The stolen data includes names, contact details, answers to security questions and passwords for other online examiner systems.
But the board has stressed that the systems which were attacked did not contain bank details, data belonging to any schools or students taking exams or exam material.
Last month, AQA’s Information Security team detected the cyber attack on their online systems for examiners; the affected systems were taken offline while the security issues were fixed.
‘We’ll give them whatever support they need’
At first, the exam board thought no data had been stolen. But last week, they discovered that data relating to around 64,000 people had been taken.
AQA has been contacting everyone whose details were taken. The exam board has also been in touch with the Information Commissioner’s Office and exams watchdog Ofqual.
David Shaw, AQA’s chief information officer, said: “We’re really disappointed that this has happened despite our huge efforts to keep our systems secure, and we’re very sorry that our examiners have been affected.
“We’ll give them whatever support they need, and we’d like to reassure students and parents that none of this affects this summer’s exams.”
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