BY MICHAEL OLOHAN
OF NORTHERN VALLEY PRESS
TENAFLY, N.J.J –– Parents of approximately 300 senior students at Tenafly High School were notified Nov. 3 that the system containing students’ grades and transcripts had been breached by a 16-year-old senior male student who altered only his grades and transcripts before the breach was detected.
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High School Principal James Morrison confirmed via email to parents of the high school’s 284 seniors that “the identified hack was limited to the individual subject of the investigation. It was determined that the integrity of all other Tenafly High School student transcripts and records were not compromised,” he wrote.
Morrison said that the high school’s Counseling Department first identified that “an individual student’s transcript appeared to have been compromised.” He said the administration “launched an investigation and determined that Genesis, the district’s student management system, and Naviance system were breached.”
Genesis is the state-required computer system that high schools use to record student grades while Naviance is the student information database used by most colleges to access student grades and transcripts for admissions.
Tenafly Schools Superintendent Geoffrey Gordon said that the district immediately emailed parents to be “transparent” and assure them that “it was limited to this one student,” he added.
“To the best of my knowledge, this is the first and only time this type of breach has occurred,” said Gordon.
He said a top-notch cyber-security firm was brought in following detection of the breach to investigate and bolster the district’s cyber-security, including improving firewalls to prevent any future breaches.
Moreover, Gordon said all staff were advised to change their system passwords.
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Gordon said the breach only involved one male student altering his grades and transcript, and that a criminal investigation is ongoing.
Tenafly Police Chief Robert Chamberlain confirmed that charges were filed in Bergen County Juvenile Court by the board of education against the student. Currently they are waiting to find out if the charges will be issued by a judge, said Chamberlain. If charges are confirmed, a criminal charge is likely.
Chamberlain said that his department reached out to the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office cyber-crimes unit to assist in an ongoing investigation being conducted by his department and the school board.