10,000 Teachers Sign up for Credit Monitoring After Unauthorized Access of Database by Reporter

Around 10,000 Missouri teachers have signed up for 12 months of credit and identity theft monitoring offered by the state after discovering a website data flaw back in October. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch informed the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education of the problem when one of its reporters hacked into the system.  That reporter could be facing criminal charges for unauthorized access to a government database.  The online structure weakness had the ability to publicly show the social security numbers of about 100-thousand teachers. Missouri K-12 Education Commissioner, Dr. Margie Vandeven says the security of the data collected is of the utmost importance to the agency.

Vandeven says the state is working to get the teacher certification relaunched in a safe manner.